Long-haul research: benefits for conserving and managing biodiversity.

Abstract

SEVERAL times a year, every year for the last two decades, members of the Desert Ecology Research Group at the University of Sydney have made the long trek to the Simpson Desert in central Australia to continue biological monitoring and carry out experiments on a range of ecological and conservation-related topics. This is long-haul research: long-term biological sampling and experimental work that takes place in distant study sites. This kind of research is unusual in that much ecological inquiry takes place close to home and is completed over short periods — typically three years, which is the duration of most postgraduate projects and research grants from major funding bodies such as the Australian Research Council. If short-term local research is the norm, why should anyone contemplate undertaking multi-year hajjes to remote areas? What are the advantages, the challenges and payoffs from long-haul research? In this essay I argue that long-term research is essential to understand the dynamics and processes that drive ecological systems and provide the insights necessary to conserve them. I then propose that such research is needed most critically in remote areas where losses of species and ecological processes often continue apace, but pass unobserved and unremarked. In Australia, areas that are remote for most of us, both physically and conceptually, are the vast and varied landscapes of the continental interior.