TERN Surveillance Monitoring Program

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.

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.

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.

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.

Occurrence records can be accessed through the Atlas of Living Australia.

TERN Ecosystem Surveillance undertakes field surveys implementing the AusPlots Survey Protocols across a national network of ecosystem observation and monitoring plots and transects. Standardised methodologies are across a one-hectare plot to collect baseline environmental monitoring data.

The ecosystem research collected in the TERN land observatory are made openly available to the ecosystem studies, science and management community to:

• Increase the understanding of the dynamics of plant species and soils
• Progress knowledge on distribution, abundance and threats to ecosystems
• Increase the knowledge of carbon and nutrient budgets of soils and vegetation
• Input into DNA barcoding of Australian vegetation and soil communities
• Determine the genetic and phylogenetic diversity and biogeography of the continent
• Assist in the field validation of remote sensing products
• Assist state and federal agencies to meet monitoring and reporting obligations
• Create a photographic reference of key Australian bioregions, enhance existing State photo reference libraries.