3 Our capacity to tell an Australian ecological story Ben Sparrow, Eleanor Dormontt, Nicole Thurgate, Emma Burns, David Lindenmayer and Andrew Lowe sustained future investment in long-term research in these areas to maximise our capacity to tell a truly Australian ecological story accurately. INTRODUCTION Australia contains some of the oldest, most-weathered landscapes (Gale 1992 Twidale 1997) and nutrient- poor soils in the world (Orians and Milewski 2007; Morton et al. 2011). Yet, it is also one of the world’s most mega-diverse countries (Mittermeier et al. 1997). Over the millions of years of isolation (Byrne et al. 2008), Australian flora and fauna have evolved adap- tations to high temperature (Hoffman and Parsons 1997), variable water availability (Byrne et al. 2008; Nimmo et al. 2012) and frequent fires (Bowman 1999; Bradstock et al. 2012). Australia’s highly variable cli- mate supports various globally significant ecosystems (Braithwaite 1990), ranging from tropical to temper- ate and from arid to alpine environments (Stern et al. 2000). To manage these unique resources, we need to understand the key components of ecosystems, their distribution, and the key drivers of ecosystem func- tion and change, both natural and human. This book SUMMARY This chapter investigates the combined power of the long-term environmental monitoring studies, which are documented in the following data chapters (5 to 13), to inform on environmental change at a national scale. That is, to tell an Australian ecological story. We compare the locations of the core studies included in this volume against nationally consistent environ- mental classifications that are regularly used by fed- eral and state government agencies to make management and policy decisions. Our chapter high- lights areas where we have good spatial coverage of environmental monitoring and also areas where there are insufficient monitoring sites to appropriately inform decision making. We find that the most habit- able and/or productive areas, in terms of climate, are those most intensively sampled (see Box 3.1). Con- versely, the majority of the vast arid areas of the conti- nent are most poorly sampled. This finding is not surprising, given the proximity of research institu- tions to economically important areas and the logisti- cal challenges faced when accessing arid Australia. However, under-sampled areas, and the vegetation communities that dominate them, constitute the major proportion of our country and we encourage