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Terrain analysis of vegetation distribution and satellite image classification generally require training data from numerous field sites. On remote subantarctic islands, where access is difficult and the opportunities for aerial photography are limited by cost and weather conditions…

This study implemented and applied a binary ensemble classifier for … identification of grazed vegetation communities on Macquarie Island from very … high resolution Quickbird imagery. Rabbit grazing has severely affected … Macquarie’s unique sub-Antarctic vegetation communities.

The Australian Antarctic Data Centre is considering ways to modify the Biodiversity Database to improve the management of non-native species records. A new facility to associate images with species records could assist with species identification…

1. Owing to the detrimental impacts of invasive alien species, their control is often a priority for … conservation management. Whereas the potential for unforeseen consequences of management is … recognized, their associated complexity and costs are less widely appreciated. 2.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when blubber oil fuelled house lamps, the king … penguin population at Macquarie Island was reduced from two very large (perhaps hundreds of thousands … of birds) colonies to about 3000 birds. One colony…

When resources are limited or patchy, a species may develop some degree of resource … partitioning to reduce intra-specific competition. Development of intra-specific resource partitioning … is more pronounced in species with clear phenotypic variation among individuals (e.g. age or sex).

Supervised dive classification is a commonly used technique for categorising time-depth profiles of diving … vertebrates. Such analyses permit the description and quantification of dive behaviour and foraging tactics, and highlight feeding locations. Ideally…

Changes in buoyancy during an animal’s time at sea are a powerful tool for inferring … spatial and temporal foraging success. Buoyancy can be difficult to measure, but in some species of … seal, drift components of dives can be used.

The use of sophisticated telemetry logging devices has revealed that short-finned pilot whales employ … energetic sprints to chase down their deep-dwelling prey. These sprints are costly in terms of energy, and therefore oxygen…

Understanding the cryptic lives of wide–ranging wild animals such as seals can be challenging, but with the … advent of miniaturised telemetry and data–logging devices this is now possible and relatively straightforward. However…

Recently, Vergani et al. (2008) examined the … climatic drivers of population dynamics … (weaning mass) and foraging performance … (diet variation) from southern elephant … seals, Mirounga leonina, in the Atlantic sector … of the Southern Ocean.

We investigate using relative amounts of … prey DNA recovered from pinniped faeces to obtain … diet composition data. Faeces were obtained from … captive sea lions being fed a diet containing three fish … species (50%, 36% and 14% by mass).

1. In terrestrially breeding phocid seals males are significantly larger than females with their large … size conferring advantage in male–male competition, and increasing their ability to fast during the … breeding season, prolonging tenure and hence mating opportunities. 2.

Ozone hole over Antarctica exists almost three decades each austral spring.

The zonal anomalies data in total ozone and thermal tropopause height … shows that ozone depletion during austral spring has a strong influence on … the height and sharpness of the tropopause over West Antarctica.

The Global Muon Detector Network (GMDN) was … completed by installing a multi-directional cosmic-ray muon … hodoscope in Kuwait University in March 2006. The GMDN is … currently consisting of four multi-directional muon detectors … located at Nagoya (Japan), Hobart (Australia), Sao Martinho …

Commercial sealers exterminated the original … fur seal population at Macquarie Island in the early 1800s. The Wrst breeding record since the sealing era was not … reported until March 1955. Three species of fur seal now … occur at Macquarie Island, the Antarctic (Arctocephalus … gazella)…