University of Western Australia’s Canopy Resilience Project update: Associate Professor Sally Thompson
The University of Western Australia’s Canopy Resilience Project, launched in May to address drought challenges for local trees and is reporting encouraging results following decent winter rainfall in Perth.
UWA’S Centre for Water and Spatial Science has been assessing the impact of extreme weather on Perth’s trees through remote sensing and community observations.
Joining On The Record’s Atikah Hurley is Associate Professor Sally Thompson, leader of UWA’s Canopy Resilience Project, to give us insight into the project and recent findings about drought stricken trees in Perth.
“We were feeling pretty dismal after a tough summer, witnessing trees in our neighbourhood suffer and start to die. We wanted to try turn that on its head and say that there are a bunch of trees that are fine. So can we learn from this event? To try and find out what causes some trees to be resilient to hot and dry conditions.”
Researchers called for the WA public’s help in assessing the damage to local vegetation caused by the state’s previous record shattering summer of heat.
The community submitted over twelve hundred health reports of their local tree populations.
“We’ve received a range of submissions, some include photos and some were ratings of trees. All of them were located on a map and people wandered out into their community to look at the trees, see if they had brown leaves, dead or if it was just fine.”
For more information on the Canopy Resilience Project, you can head to their website here.