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Nasa launches its Osirex-Rex probe, which will try to grab a sample of rock from an asteroid and return it to Earth.

Germany’s BayWa becomes latest to tap demand for battery storage in Australian solar market.

Our EcoCheck series takes the pulse of some of Australia’s most important ecosystems to find out if they’re in good health or on the wane.

The Grampians National Park is a large conservation reserve, sprawling across 168,000 hectares embedded in western Victoria’s agricultural landscape. With a rich cultural heritage and regionally important flora and fauna, it is a hugely significant area for conservation. But in recent years it has been subjected to a series of major wildfire events, a flood, and long periods of low rainfall.

Our research shows that this has sent small mammal populations on the kind of boom-and-bust rollercoaster ride usually seen in arid places, not temperate forests.

The fire and the flood

We began studying the Grampians in 2008, investigating how small mammals had responded to a catastrophic wildfire that burned half of the national park in 2006. What started as a one-year study has turned into a long-term research program to investigate how the past few years of hypervariable rainfall and heightened bushfire activity have affected the animals that live in the park.

Fortunately (for our study, at least), the beginning of our research in 2008 was in the middle of a long run of very poor rainfall years, as the Millennium Drought reached its height. The drought was broken at the end of 2010 by the Big Wet, which led to well-above-average rainfall and floods in the Grampians.

But soon after, rainfall rapidly dipped back to below average. It has stayed there ever since. We also saw two more major fire events, in 2013 and 2014, which together with the 2006 fire burned some 90% of the Grampians landscape.

The reason this is fortunate from a scientific point of view is that this sequence of events has mimicked almost exactly the predictions of what climate change will bring.

We believe the Grampians is offering us a lens through which to look at future climate conditions and at how ecosystems will respond.

Animals on the wane

We have monitored small mammal communities at 36 sites throughout the Grampians each year since 2008. The system exhibited extremely slow recovery after the 2006 wildfires, with the mammal community dominated by the introduced house mouse.

Then all of a sudden, in 2011 and particularly 2012, the system went boom. Mammal numbers almost trebled. We were seeing species in areas where we had never found them before, and populations were flourishing.

It was amazing. But almost as fast as the system went up, it crashed back to low numbers again by 2013 and has stayed that way since.

This boom and bust is not something we would expect to see in a temperate forest ecosystem such as the Grampians. It is more like what you would expect to see in arid ecosystems.

It is clear that rainfall is incredibly important for the region’s small mammal communities. If the rain turns off, mammal numbers decline and they retreat to areas that offer enough resources for them to survive.

The rain is a critical bottom-up driver of this ecosystem, because it sparks plant growth, which in turn encourages invertebrates. Mammals depend on both for food.

The climate question

How can these findings inform us about the potential impacts of climate change? Maybe we need to look at what the broad predictions are for future climate conditions in southeast Australia. What we can expect is a general reduction in rainfall, with rainfall in many years falling well below long-term averages, punctuated by extreme rainfall events and floods.

We can also expect to see much more fire activity, with more frequent, bigger and more intense bushfires.

Our research suggests that places like the Grampians, which we thought would be fairly resilient to climate change, may be in far more trouble than we thought. We could potentially lose species entirely if the dry periods continue for too long.

Possibly more troubling is the potential interplay between flood events and subsequent fires.

Effectively, the flood events could be promoting fires. While this sounds counterintuitive, floods drive rapid vegetation growth and recovery, effectively priming the landscape for severe fires once rainfall dwindles again.

We saw this in 2013 and 2014, with major fires following on the heels of the 2011 floods. While fire is not a bad thing for ecosystems, our research has highlighted the critical importance of having a lot of long-unburnt vegetation in the system to promote the best conditions for mammal communities.

Unfortunately, the system has extremely limited long-unburnt vegetation. If climate change pans out in a similar way to what we have seen in the Grampians, the capacity for ecosystems to maintain such vegetation will be compromised, with worrying implications for native wildlife.

At this stage, the long-term prognosis for the health of the Grampians ecosystem is mixed. With very little long-unburnt vegetation, many small mammals will struggle until the vegetation ages. They may be waiting a long time if future rainfall and bushfire projections are accurate.

We commented earlier on how lucky we have been in getting such hypervariable rainfall conditions across the duration of our research. We could not have shown that a system like the Grampians is acting like an arid boom-bust system if we had not decided to take a long-term approach.

Long-term studies like this, however, are rare in Australia and most of our knowledge is thus limited to mere snapshots. If we had conducted typical short-term studies looking at the response of mammals to fire in 2009 versus 2012, we would have missed the intervening boom.

In the face of emerging climate change, we need to foster more long-term ecological research programs around Australia in different landscape types.

You can follow this research project on Twitter at @Wild_Gramps.

And if you’re a researcher who studies an iconic Australian ecosystem and would like to give it an EcoCheck, get in touch.

John White receives funding from Parks Victoria for some of the research discussed in this article.

Dale Nimmo receives funding from the Hermon Slade Foundation, the Australian Academy of Science, Parks Victoria, the Department of Land, Water and Planning, and the Department of Parks and Wildlife

Susannah Hale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

A study into the DNA of giraffes reveals they are not one species, but four.

When Bill Shankly came knocking | University of Sheffield | Social mobility tsar

Bob Lamb’s letter (8 September) reminds me that my Auntie Jean, who lived in Allerton, recounted the arrival of unexpected guests at her door one day in the early 1960s. It was her cousin, Bill Shankly, with his friend, Matt Busby. “We need somewhere to talk,” said Bill. “Walls have ears at Anfield, you know.”
Karen Lewton
Newcastle upon Tyne

• How sad to read that the University of East Anglia is preparing to sacrifice its green space for car parking (Report, 8 September). At the University of Sheffield, where I work, we are banishing motor cars from the central campus and working with the city to create wildflower refuges, like the “Grey to Green” scheme in the legal district.
Simon Geller
Sheffield

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A British student has invented a mobile fridge to transport vaccines on long journeys at the right temperature.

UK researchers launch a global effort to source photos of threatened or destroyed cultural landmarks and compile them into 3D reconstructions, housed within an online map.

It is a famous, gentle giant of the African savannah, but the giraffe's genetics have only just revealed that there is not one species, but four.

Residents in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, didn’t need to be asked twice when the Environment Agency offered to buy their flood-ravaged houses

Eight-and-a-half months after the river Calder invaded his terrace with such force that the neighbouring travel agency collapsed into the water, Tony Kay was finally able to clear out the house on Thursday. “Good riddance,” he said, as he lugged bits of kitchen into the boot of his car on Burnley Road in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire.

He couldn’t wait to give the keys to an Environment Agency official and be shot of the place, one of 238 homes, 48 businesses and one school in the Calder Valley still uninhabitable after the Boxing Day floods. The Agency offered to buy the doomed property and Kay didn’t need asking twice.

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Discovery of genetic differences, using DNA analysis, could boost efforts to save declining populations

Researchers have discovered there are not just one but four distinct species of giraffe, overturning two centuries of accepted wisdom in a finding that could boost efforts to save the last dwindling populations.

Analysis of DNA evidence from all of the currently recognised nine sub-species found that there is not just one species of giraffe but enough genetic differences to recognise four distinct species. Experts said the differences are as large as those between brown bears and polar bears.

Giraffe have suffered a decline in number from around 150,000 across Africa three decades ago to 100,000 today, as their habitat has been turned over to agriculture. But as a single species the giraffe is currently listed as of least concern on the red list of endangered species, leaving the tallest living animals a relatively low conservation focus compared to rhino and elephant.

“People need to really figure out that giraffes are in danger. There are only 100,000 giraffes left in Africa. We’ll be working closely with governments and big NGOs to put giraffes on the radar,” said Dr Julian Fennessy, lead author of the new study which saw genetic testing in Germany on 190 giraffe.

The four recommended new species are the southern giraffe, with two subspecies, the Angolan giraffe and South African giraffe; the Masai giraffe; the reticulated giraffe; and the northern giraffe including the Kordofan giraffe and west African giraffe as subspecies.

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Experts warn there may be no unspoilt places left within a century as report shows an area twice the size of Alaska has been lost since 1993

Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth’s remaining wilderness in the last 25 years and there may be none left within a century if trends continue, according to an authoritative new study.

Researchers found a vast area the size of two Alaskas – 3.3m square kilometres – had been tarnished by human activities between 1993 and today, which experts said was a “shockingly bad” and “profoundly large number”.

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在接下来的一年，英国《卫报》将与中外对话联合推出大象保护与拯救的系列报道。翻译：金枝 (中外对话/chinadialogue)

从早先欧美的象牙收藏热，到近来亚洲地区对象牙高涨的需求，一波又一波的屠杀已经将非洲大象逼向灭绝的边缘。过去十年，为了满足人们对象牙不灭的热情，非法狩猎活动猖獗，导致非洲大象数量灾难性下降。

Related: 事实上，大象已经濒临灭绝

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A new partnership with chinadialogue will bring a year of in-depth reporting, expert opinion and features to a crucial audience of consumers and readers in China

Wave after wave of elephant slaughter, driven first by European and US ivory collectors and more recently by demand in Asia, has brought the African elephant to its knees. A catastrophic decline in the past decade is primarily due to poaching to feed a continuing passion for ivory.

The poachers are mainly Africans, but their clients are often criminal gangs based in Asia who smuggle the tusks on planes and ships to countries where demand for ivory continues to grow. The largest of these is China.

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目前全球大象种群处境危急。卡尔·马蒂森 就将向我们解释，为何大象即将迎来前所未有的生死攸关时刻。

翻译: Estelle/中外对话/chinadialogue

作为陆地上体积最大的野生动物，声音如雷、体重可达六吨的大象可谓是生物演化史上的一个奇迹。除了它们那有着10万块肌肉的灵活无比的鼻子，和能帮助它们驱走热量的特大号耳朵之外，大象族群还有着复杂的母系社会结构，它们甚至还会在同伴逝去之后恸哭哀痛。而大象的另外一个特征就是长长的象牙，这本来应该是它们保护自己的防卫武器，然而却最终成为了族群濒危的导火索。

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The overview effect is the transformative experience astronauts feel on seeing Earth from space and mankind’s place and impact upon it. Images from a new book, Overview: A New Perspective, by Benjamin Grant display the beauty and fragility of our planet and its natural resources

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As many as 530 key infrastructure sites across England are vulnerable to flooding, according to a government review.

National review prompted by severe flooding in recent winters anticipates 20-30% more extreme downpours than before

The UK’s new flood defence plans anticipate significantly higher extreme rainfall, after new research was published as part of the government’s National Flood Resilience review.

The government, which had been criticised for not taking full account of the impact of climate change in driving up flood risk, will now plan for 20-30% more extreme downpours than before.

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Humans have an impact on species migration both through climate change and by changing the landscape.

One of the reasons climate change is such an important topic is that it will affect (and already is affecting) the natural biological systems. Both plants and animals will have to respond to the changing climate. In some cases, this means adapting to higher temperatures. In other cases, the changes may be alterations in the precipitation, length of growing season, availability or resources, or other influences.

While some animals can adapt, others will have to migrate. Obviously migration can be apparent in mobile animals that will move to maintain a more or less similar climate to that to which they are accustomed.

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Astronomers at St Andrews university have observed tantalising glimpses of how our own planet may have been born

Former floods minister Richard Benyon says leaving EU will allow UK to pay farmers to hold back flood water

Farmers could to be paid to hold back flood water under a post-Brexit rural payments system, according to former floods minister Richard Benyon.

Speaking before Thursday’s publication of the government’s report into the response to flooding in Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire last December, Benyon predicted that more resources would be made available.

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