Rainfall-driven Episodic Flood Events: are they a major factor in moulding New South Wales arid land vegetation patterns?

Episodic high rainfall has been proposed as an important factor in perennial species recruitment but flooding based on rainfall at a distance from the site has received little attention. Although such flood events in arid Australia are rare, studies of the ephemeral Olary Creek indicate that occasional floods can also have a high impact on the vegetation and landscape. During February 1997, a high-rainfall event caused flooding in the Olary Creek. One branch of the creek created a terminal lake within mallee vegetation on Nagaela Station in far-western New South Wales. The flood path of Olary Creek and this terminal lake allow study of the importance of rainfall-driven flood events in shaping vegetation in arid environments. This paper reports (i) the response of arid land plant species to high-rainfall-driven episodic flood events and (ii) how grazing pressure from native and introduced herbivores can impact on native species response.

A systematic study was conducted to understand the botanical composition in flooded and control areas based on 25 m² fenced and unfenced plots subjected to flooding and non-flooding. For 6 years following flooding, species richness in the flooded area was twice that of unflooded areas. In particular, 27 native species from 13 families were recorded both in the enclosed and open plots located in the flooded area. Over the study period nine species: Brachyscome ciliaris, Helichrysum leucopsidium, Vittadinia cuneata, Casuarina pauper, Maireana sedifolia, Salsola kali, Sclerolaena obliquicuspis, Eremophila sturtii and Eucalyptus foecunda germinated only in the flooded enclosed plots. Further, 11 exotic species from five families were recorded in the flooded (both enclosed and open) plots over the study period. Knowledge gained from this study will contribute to management strategies for arid land vegetation.     

Estimating the size and distribution of South Asian religious populations in Britain: is there an alternative to a religion question in the census?

This paper addresses the question of whether there is an alternative to asking a direct religious question in the 2001 Census through a systematic review of alternative methods of quantifying religious populations. After establishing the limited availability of direct information on religion, the paper considers the application of an inferential method for estimating religious populations based on data from the 1994 Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities (NSEM). Except for the monoreligious Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations, evidence of substantial spatial variation in the association between ethnicity and religion severely limits application of the method below national level. Using the religiously diverse Indian population of outer London as a case study, the NSEM is investigated to see whether the incorporation of other ?predictors? of religion as weighting variables improves sensitivity of the method to this variation. In a second method, logistic regression is employed to develop predictive models of religious affiliation for application to census microdata. Based on these two applications, it was concluded that very little of the variation in the religious geography of Indians in outer London can be inferred from measured characteristics in the census. However, this does not necessarily imply support for inclusion of a religion question in the 2001 Census. It was suggested that it may be more appropriate and cost effective to define and solve the need for data locally.