Plants on stand by: the textiles and clothing industry in non‐metropolitan areas of New South Wales and Victoria

About 0.3 million t/year of composted garden organics (CGO) including mulches and soil conditioners are produced annually in New South Wales, Australia, although only a small proportion of this material (<4%) is used in agriculture. A lack of information on product characteristics and agronomic performance has limited the development of agricultural markets for CGO products. These CGO products are the coarse and fine fractions separated by screening after composting. This paper presents the results of a survey of CGO mulches and soil conditioners (unblended or blended with a mixture of other organic materials including biosolids, animal manures and paper), which are commercially produced in the metropolitan areas of New South Wales and assesses their agronomic and soil amendment values in terms of chemical and biological properties. It also evaluates the short-term effects of applying increasing rates (0, 25, 50 and 100 t/ha) of selected composted soil conditioners on radish growth in a pot experiment. The mulch products had low nutrient concentrations but had high carbon (C) contents (mean C = 45%) and C/Nitrogen (N) ratios (mean C/N = 72) and are most suitable for use as surface mulch. The unblended soil conditioners were low in nutrients, particularly N (average total N = 1.0%, range 0.9–12%), and had lower and variable C contents. The pot trial results indicated lack of growth response of radish at application rates up to 100 t/ha of unblended soil conditioners from garden organics. The blended soil conditioners were more variable in quality and as confirmed by pot trial results produced highly variable plant responses. The high variability in product quality and performance of the soil conditioners, particularly the blended products might be related to the source and type of blending material as well as the composting conditions used in the manufacturing process. These results highlight the need to improve compost quality and consistency and the need for further research to advance understanding of the benefits using CGO in terms of improving soil quality, crop productivity and net economic returns to growers.

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Spatial Analysis, Interactive Visualisation and GIS-Based Dashboard for Monitoring Spatio-Temporal Changes of Hotspots of Bushfires over 100 Years in New South Wales, Australia

Buildings ◽

10.3390/buildings11020037 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 37

Author(s):

Michael Visner ◽

Sara Shirowzhan ◽

Chris Pettit

Keyword(s):

Prescribed Burning ◽

Metropolitan Areas ◽

New South ◽

New South Wales ◽

Temporal Analysis ◽

North Coast ◽

Prescribed Burns ◽

South Wales ◽

Spatio Temporal ◽

Over Time

The 2019–2020 bushfire season is estimated to be one of the worst fire seasons on record in Australia, especially in New South Wales (NSW). The devastating fire season ignited a heated public debate on whether prescribed burning is an effective tool for preventing bushfires, and how the extent of bushfires has been changing over time. The objective of this study is to answer these questions, and more specifically to identify how bushfire patterns have changed in the last 100 years in NSW. To do so, we conducted a spatio-temporal analysis on prescribed burns and bushfires using a 100-year dataset of bushfires. More specifically, three research questions were developed, with each one of them addressed differently. First, generalised linear modelling was applied to assess the changes in fire patterns. Second, a correlation analysis was conducted to examine whether prescribed burns are an effective tool for reducing bushfire risk. Third, a spatio-temporal analysis was applied to the bushfire location data to explore spatio-temporal clusters of high and low values for bushfires, known as hotspots and coldspots, respectively. The study found that the frequency of bushfires has increased over time; however, it did not identify a significant trend of change in their size. Based on the results of this study for the relationship between prescribed burns and bushfires, it seems impossible to determine whether prescribed burns effectively reduce bushfire risk. Thus, further analysis with a larger amount of data is required in the future. The results of the spatio-temporal analysis showed that cold spots are propagated around metropolitan areas such as Sydney, while hotspots are concentrated in rural areas such as the North Coast and South Coast regions of NSW. The analysis found four statistical areas that have become new bushfire frequency hotspots in the 2019–2020 bushfire season. These areas combined have about 40,000 residents and at least 13,000 built dwellings. We suggest that further analysis is needed in the field to determine if there is a pattern of movement of bushfire towards metropolitan areas. To make the results of this research accessible to the public, an online interactive GIS-based dashboard was developed. The insight gained from the spatial and temporal analyses in this research is crucial to making smarter decisions on allocating resources and developing preventive or mitigating strategies.

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