Ecological monitoring in the Greater Blue Mountains

Western Sydney University’s Blue Mountains Hub for Ecology and Conservation has made substantial progress in establishing a long-term, integrated ecological monitoring network across one of Australia’s most significant and vulnerable landscapes. Developed in partnership with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) and technology partner Edaphic Scientific, the Hub is laying the foundations for a research platform that will support ecological science, conservation management, and environmental decision-making for decades to come.

Over the past year, the Hub has completed field surveys for 35 permanent ecological monitoring plots extending from the Cumberland Plain, across the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, and into the Central West of New South Wales. This 165-kilometre transect spans a broad range of elevation, climate, and vegetation types, capturing major environmental gradients in temperature and rainfall. The resulting plot network provides a robust framework for understanding how ecosystems respond to pressures such as climate change, drought, fire, and urban expansion at Sydney’s western edge.

Each plot has been established using a standardised design to ensure long-term consistency and compatibility with national and international monitoring programs. Within 30-metre diameter plots, all trees greater than or equal to 10 centimetres in diameter have been measured, tagged, and mapped, creating a permanent record of forest structure and composition. Larger, overlaid survey areas support monitoring of fauna, enabling integrated assessments of vegetation and biodiversity across dry sclerophyll forest, wet sclerophyll forest, and rainforest communities.

A major milestone for the Hub has been the completion of terrestrial LiDAR scanning (TLS) across 35 plots. These surveys were led by Professor Kim Calders in collaboration with the SpaceTwin team, including Zane Cooper, Wout Cherlet, and Wouter Van den Broeck (Ghent University).

The high-resolution three-dimensional scans provide unprecedented detail on forest structure, enabling precise estimates of biomass, carbon storage, and structural complexity. The terrestrial LiDAR datasets are being complemented by aerial LiDAR surveys using unmanned aerial vehicles, allowing forest structure to be scaled from individual plots to the surrounding landscape. Together, these approaches position the Hub at the forefront of forest monitoring and ecological remote sensing in Australia.

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Source & image credit: Western Sydney University