The lesser hairy­footed dunnart (<i>Sminthopsis youngsoni, Dasyuridae</i>) is a generalist marsupial insectivore in arid Australia, but consumes wolf spiders (<i>Lycosa spp., Lycosidae</i>) disproportionately often relative to their availability. This project tested the hypothesis that this disproportionate predation is a product of frequent encounter rates between the interactants due to high overlap in their diets and use of space and time. This data set focuses on overlap in the use of different microhabitats of wolf spiders (<i>Lycosa spp.</i>) and the lesser hairy­footed dunnart (<i>Sminthopsis youngsoni</i>) in the Simpson Desert, south­western Queensland Australia. Microhabitat use was determined by estimating the percentage cover of seven microhabitat variables and distance to nearest cover along trails left by individuals of each species­ group and a randomly orientated (control) trail for each actual trail as a measure of the availability of each microhabitat within the local environment. Trail length was also recorded and data was collected across 16 trapping grids at Main Camp during July and October (winter and Spring) in 2017. Differences in microhabitat use between trail types (actual vs control) and species (lycosids vs dunnarts) were assessed using non­metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and permutational analyses of variance (PERMANOVA). These analyses were performed using this data.

The data set contains information on the Habitat structure of the Karawatha Peri-urban site, southeast Queensland. There are two data sets: 1) information on Canopy cover percentage from the study plots and 2) information on the Ground cover properties such as the number of hits/strikes of the 'bare ground', 'rock', 'herbs', 'grass', 'shrubs', 'trees' and 'cwd', along each transect in the core plot.

This data set contains the count data of reptiles captured through pitfall and funnel trapping in surveys of grazing agricultural properties in the Central Tablelands of NSW, Australia. Experimental treatments were examined and additional environmental variables were recorded. Each of the 12 sites (farms) was surveyed five times, once between January and March 2014 and four times between October 2014 and March 2015. Each survey consisted of five trap nights. In total 5,040 traps were surveyed giving a combined total of 25,200 trapping nights. 1,242 captures were recorded from 28 species of reptiles. The majority of the species (19) were from the family Scincidae.

This data contains vegetation structure, species composition, cover and species basal area data collected at seven sites within the Samford Ecological Research Facility (SERF) in 2010

Experimental sites were established in the northern wheat-growing district of western Australia (Lat -29.66°, Long 116.18°) in August 2017, and monitored through to November 2019. We selected five planted old field sites with similar soil types and vegetation composition. Old fields were planted with York gum (Eucalyptus loxophleba Benth.) and dominant shrubs as understorey. At the time of sampling in 2017, vegetation age ranged from 8–13 years and distance from remnant measured 279 m (± 162 m). We established two control and two treatment plots, each measuring 5 m x 5 m, in the interrows of five planted old field sites. Both treatments were randomly assigned to plots within each site. Between August and early November 2017, we measured a total of 30 response variables at each of the control and treatment plots. Response variables included soil physical and chemical properties (bulk density, penetration resistance, soil moisture, nitrogen and carbon pools), microbial biomass, decomposition rate of roiboos and green tea as per the standardized Tea Bag Index (TBI) protocol, herbaceous vegetation cover and richness, and ant abundance and richness, as well as abundance and richness of ant functional groups.

This dataset lists land surface characteristics observed in Rangeland sites across Australia by the TERN Ecosystem Surveillance team, using standardised AusPlots methodologies. <br /> Land surface observations are collected at each site as part of the AusPlots method. At each site, observations on ground cover, lithology, erosion (state, extent, and human accelerated), surface drainage, microrelief, aspect and angle are recorded as part of the Ausplots Ground cover and Plot description methods.<br />

<p> TERN Ecosystem Surveillance is a plot-based field monitoring platform that tracks the direction and magnitude of change in Australia’s environments. Information on soils and vegetation is collected according to standardized, widely endorsed and consistent protocols across all plots, and includes the collection of soil and vegetation samples for subsequent analysis.</p> <p>Data collected by TERN is stratified across the entire continent to ensure adequate coverage of major Australian ecosystems, and measures are repeated at least once a decade, with the aim to establish replicate plots throughout the ecosystem types existing within Australia’s Major Vegetation Groups (MVG’s). Additional plots located in key environmental transition zones will be re-measured every five years.</p> <p>TERN users include researchers, land managers and policy-makers who require access to terrestrial ecosystem attributes collected over time from continental scale to field sites at hundreds of representative locations. TERN provides model-ready data that enables users to detect and interpret changes in ecosystems. In addition, TERN curates The TERN Australia Soil and Herbarium Collection with over 150,000 vegetation and soil samples (and associated contextual environmental data) freely available to loan on request.</p> <p>TERN’s world-class surveillance monitoring infrastructure will support long-term ecological inventory, environmental monitoring, environmental prediction, reporting and assessment, and underpin decisions about our greatest environmental challenges.</p> <p>Occurrence records can be accessed through the <a href="https://www.ala.org.au/">Atlas of Living Australia</a>.</p>

The QBEIS survey database (formerly CORVEG) contains ecosystem physical and vegetation characteristics, including structural and floristic attributes as well as descriptions of landscape, soil and geologic features, collected at study locations across Queensland since 1982. The resulting survey database provides a comprehensive record of areas ground-truthed during the regional ecosystems mapping process and a basis for future updating of mapping or other relevant work such as species modelling.<br /><br /> Only validated survey data is made publicly available and all records of confidential taxa have been masked from the dataset. Data is accessible from the TERN Data Infrastructure, which provides the ability to extract subsets of vegetation, soil and landscape data across multiple data collections and bioregions for more than 100 variables including basal area, crown cover, growth form, stem density and vegetation height.