Planning for ember attack within the interface

This dissertation explores the relationship between the urban rural interface, with particular reference to air pressure, wind patterns, and the build up of hot ash deposits adjacent to combustible surfaces, in order to devise strategies relating to the design of building forms.

Implications of future climate for marine fish

Climate change has already been linked to significant impacts on Earth's ocean ecosystems including shifts in species geographic ranges, changes in population abundance, shits in timing of seasonal events, and establishment of introduced species (Walter et al. 2002, Parmesan and Yohe 2003). Global climate modelling for the Australian region has identified south-eastern Australia as the area that will be subject to the greatest impacts from climatic change (Lough 2009). The major changes predicted include warming of air and water, changes to wind patterns, changes to the strength and southerly extent of dominant oceanic currents flowing down the east and west coasts of Australia, changes to rainfall and run-off (distribution, timing and intensity), increasing ocean acidification, increasing exposure to UV light and sea level rise (Lough and Hobday 2011). Victorian species may be at greater risk than species in other areas of Australia, because Victorian marine waters are in a zone of predicted high climate change (Johnson et al. 2011, Wernberg et al. 2011).

Variation in energy intake and basal metabolic rate of a bird migrating in a wind tunnel

1. We studied the changes in body mass, metabolizable energy intake rate (ME) and basal metabolic rate (BMR) of a Thrush Nightingale, Luscinia luscinia, following repeated 12-h migratory flights in a wind tunnel. In total the bird flew for 176 h corresponding to 6300 km. This is the first study where the fuelling phase has been investigated in a bird migrating in captivity.

2. ME was very high, supporting earlier findings that migrating birds have among the highest intake rates known among homeotherms. ME was significantly higher the second day of fuelling, indicating a build-up of the capacity of the digestive tract during the first day of fuelling.

3. Further indications of an increase in size or activity level of metabolically active structures during fuelling come from the short-term variation in BMR, which increased over the 2-day fuelling period with more than 20%, and in almost direct proportion to body mass. However, mass-specific BMR decreased over the season.

4. The patterns of mass change, ME and BMR of our focal bird following two occasions of 12-h fasts were the same as after flights, indicating that fast and flight may involve similar physiological processes.

5. The relatively low ME the first day following a flight may be a contributing factor to the well-known pattern that migrating birds during stopover normally lose mass the first day of fuelling.