Wise use has been widely recognized as a central tenet of sustainable development in wetland management throughout the world. In 2005 the concept of wetland wise use was incorporated into the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) framework to highlight the importance of maintaining a balance between wetland utilization and maintenance of ecosystem diversity. However, the implementation of this framework has been less than effective due to a lack of official government support in terms of institutional and organisational arrangements and lack of local community engagement. The aim of this thesis was to explore the mental models of local communities and decision makers involved in wetland planning and management in Indonesia, as a means to unravel the barriers and opportunities for achieving more effective outcomes for both wetlands and local communities. The specific objectives were to better understand the mental models of the key actors involved in wetland management, as well as the broad policy, economic, social and cultural issues surrounding wetlands at multiple scales from local to national. The term mental models as used in this study referred to a collection of individual worldviews, values, beliefs and mindsets in relation to understanding human-wetland relationships. This thesis presents the findings from a case study of the mental models of community-based rehabilitation of coastal wetlands in Pemalang, Central Java. It drew from a constructivist and pragmatic research paradigm to illuminate the importance of understanding wetland wise use across the key stakeholders involved. The assumptions of the constructivist and pragmatic paradigms indicate that this approach is appropriate for gaining insight into the social and cultural context of communities in the Pemalang district. The research targeted all 110 community members, who were actively engaged in wetland rehabilitation in Pemalang coastal areas. Interviews were conducted with 22 key decision makers involved in wetland management. Systematic procedures were used to minimise the potential for bias that can be evident in interpretive research and to ensure that the findings represented accurate information regarding the phenomenon under investigation. Techniques that included face-to-face validity, triangulation, repeated and prolong observation were used to ensure the reliability and validity of the research. The data analysis used a grounded approach. Leximancer Software and Nvivo QSR analysis were used to enable the complexity of the phenomenon associated with wetland wise use within the community-based activities to be identified. A key finding of this research was that effective wetland management should incorporate community objectives that address economic, social and cultural issues. In particular, enhanced understanding of a range of social aspects is important in developing the stakeholders’ ability to nurture and provide stewardship of wetlands and to contribute to management practices that are collectively endorsed and coordinated and are socially accepted across the stakeholders involved. Decision makers viewed wetlands and their wise use on the basis of the relevant regulatory framework and had dominant anthropocentric orientations. The communities’ concerns about subsistence were the main drivers in all members who were engaged in wetland rehabilitation programs (i.e. seaweed and crab farmers, and shrimp paste makers). The community also prioritised cultural and traditional values in addressing wetland wise use. The local Pemalang communities displayed a combination of both anthropocentric and ecocentric worldviews. Comparisons across the community groups studied revealed that fish farmers’ mental models tended toward ecocentric worldviews, whereas the crab farmers and shrimp paste makers displayed strongly anthropocentric worldviews and utilitarian values concerning the meaning of wetlands and their wise use. In contrast, the decision makers’ mental models related to wetland wise use implementation showed a strong anthropocentric worldview, which was oriented to the optimisation of land use functions and compliance with the regulatory framework. This research is important as it combines both quantitative and qualitative approaches, including interviews and participant observation to provide rich descriptions and a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ mental models. By understanding these mental models, the views of the stakeholders can be more closely aligned with a stewarding and nurturing approach towards the environment. A key recommendation is the need to re-capitalise the existing National Committee of Wetland Management, through providing a more effective regulatory framework that accommodates various government regulations and integrates this with other levels of government (i.e. provincial and local). Stakeholder capacity building can be improved through encouraging and supporting local government involvement in the international network on wetland management. These findings also suggest that there is the need to support local communities in their management of wetlands by applying programs that incorporate local values, including traditional practices. Incentives should be generated through incorporating the existing international program such as bio-right entitlements for the community and introducing microfinance practices that are currently being widely practised in many less developed nations. The integration of these findings will provide insights and opportunity for more effective wetland wise use in Indonesia.

Water management has been described as one of the major natural resource management challenges facing our rural industries, regional communities, our unique natural environments and indeed, even our survival. Within this context, water ethics has emerged as a research area of some significance. However to date, a majority of the research has clustered around economic and environmental concerns. For the most part, explorations into the ethical management of water have been limited to a deliberative focus on the establishment of property rights and effective water pricing and trading mechanisms. These narrow economic approaches fail to recognise the diversity and plurality of our water values or to adequately address broader social values such as equity and justice. This research aims to address these imbalances by focusing on how we might develop a deeper understanding of ethical practice in the context of more sustainable water management. It achieves this by outlining an alternative ethical framework which will support these more sustainable social and policy outcomes. Thus, the rationale for this thesis is to demonstrate that contractual ethics, or even more specifically Scanlonian contractualism, is a viable alternative normative ethical framework to utilitarianism for considering how we might justify these more sustainable water management outcomes. There is significant debate and conflict over how water should best be managed. These debates capture not only the nature of the way we interact with the environment but also the way we interact with each other. It is in these two sets of interactions that ethics can provide us with a way of justifying our actions and decisions and a basis for determining what we consider to be right or wrong, or acceptable or unacceptable in terms of water management practice. An important element of this thesis is recognising that how we think about water has important implications for how we manage water and to date, this has been undervalued in water management. To that end, I argue we must necessarily begin to appreciate the connection between what is happening in our conceptual and theoretical landscapes and how this impacts on our physical landscapes. It is in these interactions and connections that we begin to appreciate both the depth of complexity and the ‘wicked’ nature of water management. Thus, each of these debates and their related concerns exists within the broader context of how we think water should be managed and the processes by which we come to make and justify our decisions about water management. This thesis is therefore aimed at addressing this gap in the research around ethical water management. It achieves this by providing the basis for a framework which can capture not only the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of a more sustainable water ethic but also recognise and accommodate the significant research already undertaken in a variety of other disciplines. As a result, this thesis is necessarily interdisciplinary in its approach. While I base my arguments in the field of philosophical and ethical inquiry, the construction of a conceptual framework for a more sustainable water ethic is applicable to and widely influenced by a number of other fields including geography, anthropology, scientific research, economic theory, public policy and social theory. In recognising and preserving the interdisciplinary knowledge base around water management, part of the challenge has been to construct a conceptual framework and define ethical principles that can both honour this interdisciplinarity but also remain relevant in cross disciplinary settings. The nature of this interdisciplinary approach reinforces the inherent complexity of water management and was cause for some reflection because it raised the question of how best to address the research problem. This process of reflection had direct implications on the research process adopted in this thesis because it required not only an interdisciplinary response but also a balanced approach to preserving the complexity and the ‘wickedness’ of water management. These elements needed to be preserved in the research process because they are integral to our understanding of water management and inevitably raise the difficult and particularly ‘human’ questions we associate with it. Thus, the research process adopted in this thesis can be best understood as a process of reflective equilibrium. Reflective equilibrium describes the process by which we systematically examine our judgements and beliefs about a certain issue, searching for coherence with other beliefs and then revising those beliefs where evidence suggests they need to be modified. This approach allows for a range of diverse disciplinary considerations and interests to be considered in a holistic manner and is reflected in the following research activities. In the course of this thesis, I outline the development and construction of a conceptual framework for a more sustainable water ethic, which is based on a diverse range of disciplinary knowledge and expertise. This framework is supported by a rigorous and systematic application of contractual ethical principles. The first part of the thesis reflects a process of examination and review of relevant theoretical and methodological concerns, which enable interdisciplinary research to occur. In the second part of this thesis, a detailed analysis of contractual ethical principles and a philosophical analysis of values in the context of water management are presented. The findings elicited from these stages of the research are taken forward and used to examine two deliberately chosen but quite distinct case study analyses. These two case study examples reflect the diversity and range of political and policy concerns within the broader water management debate.

Coral reef habitats are being threatened by global warming, natural disasters and the increased pressure of the global population. These habitats are in urgent need of efficient monitoring and management programs to sustain their biological, economic and cultural values for the global community. Habitats maps, describing the extent, composition and the condition of the benthos in time and space, form a valuable information source for scientists and managers to answer their management questions. Adequate and accurate habitat maps are needed and can be provided by a range of mapping approaches, which are based on integration of field and remotely sensed image data sets. Scientists, technicians and managers lack knowledge on the cost effectiveness and procedures for calibrating and validating mapping approaches that integratef field data and remote sensing imagery, for use in various coral reef and seagrass environments. This knowledge is required to adequately design, apply and assess operational mapping approaches and their maps. Hence, the aim of this study is to improve habitat mapping capabilities by integrating low cost remote sensing approaches and field-calibration and -validation methods for a range of coral reef and seagrass environments. To achieve this aim, commonly used habitat mapping approaches that integrated field-calibration and -validation methods with remote sensing image based processing techniques were studied, in different coral reef and seagrass environments in Fiji and Australia. These environments varied in: water clarity, water depth, benthic composition, spatial complexity of benthic features, and remoteness. The study had three objectives: (1) to evaluate the accuracy, cost and perceived relevance of eight commonly used benthic cover mapping approaches for three different coral reef environments. (2) Conduct a cost-benefit comparison of two field survey methods for calibrating and validating maps of coral reef benthos derived from high-spatial resolution satellite images in three different coral reef environments. (3) Identify considerations for comparing the thematic accuracy of multi-use image based habitat maps in various coral reef and seagrass environments. A scientific assessment and an evaluation of the relevance for managers, was conducted on eight commonly used habitat mapping approaches for three different coral reef environments. This analysis revealed a preference for a mapping approach based on supervised classification of Quickbird imagery integrated with basic field data. This approach produced an accurate map within a short time with low cost in that suited the user’s purpose. Additionally, the results indicated that user preference in selecting a suitable map was affected by: variations in environmental complexity; map purpose, and resource management requirements. To assess the variation in performance of methods for calibration and validation for coral reef benthic community maps, derived from high-spatial resolution satellite images, a comparison was conducted between spot check and georeferenced photo-transect based mapping approaches. The assessment found that the transect based method was a robust procedure which could be used in a range of coral reef environments to map the benthic communities accurately. In contrast, the spot check method is a fast and low cost approach suitable to map benthic communities which have lower spatial complexity. However, the spot check approach provides robust results, if it is applied in a standardised manner, providing a description of selected homogenous areas with georeferenced benthic cover photos. Considerations for comparing the thematic accuracy of multi-use image based habitat maps in various coral reef and seagrass environments were assessed. This included a review of 80 scientific publications on coral reef and seagrass habitat mapping, which revealed a lack of knowledge and reporting in regards to the assessment of the thematic map accuracy. These publications commonly used thematic accuracy measures and factors controlling their variation were then determined for various habitat mapping approaches for different coral reefs and seagrass environments. Assessment of these measures found that variations in accuracy levels were not only a result of actual differences in map accuracy, but were also due to: spatial complexity of benthic features present in the study area; distribution of the calibration and validation samples relative to each other, and the level of detail provided by these samples. Two main outcomes resulted from this dissertation. The first was the development of a robust mapping approach based on georeferenced photo-transect method integrated with high spatial resolution imagery, which is able to accurately map a variety of coral reef and seagrass habitats. The second outcome is an increase in capacity for coral reef and seagrass habitat mapping by scientists and managers. This increase is accomplished by providing knowledge on various habitat mapping approaches in regards to their: cost/time, accuracy and user relevance; performance of calibration and validation field methods; and performance of accuracy measures, when applied in a range of coral reef and seagrass environments. The findings and outcomes from this dissertation will significantly contribute to management of coral reef and seagrass environments by enabling scientists and managers to choose appropriate combinations of: field and image data sources; processing approaches, and validation methods for habitat mapping in these environments.

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The conversion of native forests to pastures and crops is one of the most extensive causes of deforestation worldwide. Concomitant with agricultural landscape modification are the processes of habitat loss and fragmentation, which are major causes of species’ extinctions, population declines and altered ecosystem functions. However, in many tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions, abandoned agricultural lands are reverting to regrowth or secondary forest, which represents an important opportunity for passive landscape restoration. Regrowth may be particularly important in highly modified landscapes, where the area of mature forest may be insufficient to support viable plant and animal communities without some form of restoration. Some studies of fauna populations in regrowth forest have found recovery of species richness within several decades, although recovery of species composition may take at least 100 years and some species may be permanently lost. While these findings are encouraging, they generally fail to account for the landscape context in which regrowth occurs and focus mainly on tropical forests. The aim of this thesis was to advance the understanding of fauna recovery in regrowth forests on abandoned agricultural land by: i) comparing woodland bird communities in a replicated chronosequence of semi-arid sub-tropical regrowth forests; and ii) quantifying how the ecological values of regrowth habitat vary among stand-, patch- and landscape-levels of ecological organisation. A review of 68 studies of fauna recovery in regrowth forests, revealed that current knowledge is limited by the predominance of studies conducted: in tropical rainforests; with minimal replication of sites; in landscapes within proximity of large tracts of relatively undisturbed mature forests; and with limited consideration of the influence of the spatial context on fauna recovery in regrowth forest. This study makes a significant contribution to understanding fauna recovery in regrowth forests by quantifying the recovery of estimated bird species richness to levels similar to mature forest, within a period of 30-60 years, in highly modified semi-arid agricultural landscapes in sub-tropical Australia. An ordination of the similarity in species composition among forest types also suggested that after 30-60 years regrowth bird communities are more similar to mature brigalow forest than the younger regrowth. This is important for the recovery of brigalow ecosystems, an endangered ecological community where regrowth is currently given minimal protection from further clearing. Comparisons of the importance of habitat attributes using model averaging and hierarchical partitioning of generalised linear models of the species richness of woodland birds showed that bird species richness was positively associated with patch age, and that stand-level factors such as grazing disturbance and the abundance of mistletoes (Amyema spp.) were also important. The spatial context of vegetation patches (size, shape and isolation) was equally important for bird species richness, with more species of woodland dependent, nectar/frugivores and non-ground foraging insectivores occurring in less modified landscape contexts, and the converse for generalist species, ground foraging insectivores and granivores. While a number of woodland dependent bird species known to be in decline in temperate woodlands of southern Australia were absent or rare in regrowth forests, several species (e.g., eastern yellow robin) also occupied regrowth habitats. This finding suggests that these more sensitive species may respond positively to landscape restoration through targeted retention of brigalow regrowth. The landscape-level amount of forest varied in importance among regrowth age classes and bird groups. In general, the amount and number of mature forest patches in the landscape were of lower importance than local attributes. However, the amount of mature forest and old regrowth (> 30 years) in the landscape did have an important positive influence on the number of woodland bird species and species’ abundance; suggesting that regrowth is making an important contribution to landscape recovery in the study area. Mistletoe abundance was strongly dependent on particular species of frugivores for seed dispersal (e.g., mistletoebird, spiny-cheeked honeyeater and painted honeyeater), and varied considerably among three sub-regions of the study area. In general, mistletoe abundance increased in linear patches and more highly modified landscapes but was also dependent on the abundance of seed dispersers and brigalow stand condition. These findings suggest that narrow linear patches in brigalow landscapes can have important conservation values for woodland birds. The study outcomes have important implications for research and management of regrowth vegetation, both within Australia and internationally. From an international perspective, the study highlights the need for greater consideration of the importance of regrowth forest in a landscape context for conserving and restoring fauna communities. From an Australian perspective, the study provides important baseline information for the conservation and management of woodland bird habitat in fragmented brigalow landscapes. Prior to this research, very little was known on the spatial ecology of woodland birds in the region. The study highlights the important conservation values of small and often linear mature brigalow patches for woodland birds and the considerable potential for restoration of habitat for a diverse range of species through the retention of regrowth vegetation. In particular, the research outcomes suggest that targeting the retention of regrowth towards increasing the size and reducing the isolation of mature brigalow forests may be an effective strategy to maximise biodiversity benefits. Brigalow regrowth stands will need to be retained for at least 60 years and probably longer to maintain viable woodland bird communities. For this to happen on a regional-scale, brigalow regrowth needs to be given greater recognition for potential biodiversity benefits either within a legislative framework or by incentive schemes to promote the long term persistence of regrowth habitat within the landscape.

Coral reefs are one of the most productive, diverse and complex ecosystems on Earth. They are very important ecologically, economically and socially, but are subject to increasing deleterious disturbances. To protect coral reefs and manage the sustainable use of their resources it is necessary to understand how coral communities respond to disturbances and to use this understanding to project the likely ecological trajectories of disturbed coral reefs in spatial and temporal contexts. Three powerful tools exist to address this issue: (1) in situ monitoring that describes ecological transitions of coral communities at very fine spatial scale; (2) time-series of maps derived from high spatial resolution remote sensing images that provide multi-temporal synoptic views of the reefs; and (3) spatially- and temporally-explicit models that are able to handle ecosystems complexity and represent their spatial dynamics. The combination of these three tools to map and monitor coral communities remained to be addressed. This dissertation developed an integrative approach to characterise, map and model coral communities’ responses to disturbances. This approach provides a basis for monitoring coral reefs at temporal and spatial scales matched to disturbance impacts and coral reefs patchiness. This was achieved by investigating the dynamics of three different Indo-Pacific reefs and by following four steps: - Developing and applying a method to characterise how detailed coral communities can be mapped before and after a major cyclone event from a short time-series of high spatial resolution images (IKONOS, Quickbird) on Aboré Reef (New-Caledonia); - Using the methods developed in the first step to assess whether decadal-scale coral dynamics can be retraced and monitored from time-series of aerial photographs and satellite images spanning at least 30 years on Saint-Leu (Réunion Island) and Heron (Australia) Reefs; - Developing a spatially- and temporally-explicit model of coral communities’ dynamics with cellular agent-based formalism on the western section of Heron reef flat; and - Assessing the relevance of the mapping, monitoring and modelling tools developed in this work, into an integrated approach for coral reef monitoring. For the first step, accurate monitoring requires that descriptions of the reef features are coherent with the local scale of disturbance impacts in space and time. While such a monitoring paradigm is applied in terrestrial environments, it is not the case for coral reefs. A before-after cyclone time-series of satellite images from Aboré Reef was used to test this paradigm on coral reefs. In situ data provided a new three-level hierarchical coral community typology (45 classes at the finest level). Photo-interpretation and hierarchical mapping methods were applied to an IKONOS image and a Quickbird image taken before and after cyclone Erica respectively. Application of this paradigm yielded a highly detailed multi-temporal maps of pre- and post-cyclone coral communities and recommendations to design reef-scale monitoring protocols. For the second step, the temporal scale of monitoring projects needs also to match the inherent reef dynamics. To assess the applicability of this temporal component of the paradigm at a decadal scale, the hierarchical mapping approaches developed for Aboré Reef were applied to a 33-year time-series of satellite images (two Quickbird images) and airborne photographs (five scanned images) of Saint-Leu Reef. The mapping approach overcame challenges due to different images qualities and to the lack of in situ observations in time and space before cyclone Firinga in 1989. This demonstrated the potential for further applications of the approach in reef monitoring protocols based on complementary in situ and remote sensing data to help understand the dynamics of reef-top coral reef communities and geomorphology over years to decades. In the next step, the modelling component of this work focused on a proof-of-concept for spatially-explicit modelling of coral growth by simulating maps of reef flat colonisation on a 16 686 m2 section of Heron Reef. To do this a 35-year time-series of two satellite Quickbird pan-sharpened images and five aerial photographs of Heron Reef was first used to hierarchically map and quantify the areal expansion of coral on the reef flat. The coral growth was driven by several artificially induced local sea-level rises associated with engineering works on the reef flat. Vertical and horizontal growth rates were quantified in terms of percentage of the total area colonised each year by corals. Coral community maps and coral growth rates estimated from the image time-series were used to constrain an accretive cellular growth model. Although only preliminary the model produced coral growth likelihood maps corresponding to observed fine-scale coral growth patterns. This suggested the tool had promise for further applications in reef management. This dissertation developed an integrative approach to characterise, map and model coral communities’ responses to disturbances, providing a basis for monitoring coral reefs at ecological, temporal, and spatial scales matching the patchiness of the communities’ distribution and disturbance impacts. The contributions of the work to the applied fields of coral reef mapping, modelling and monitoring were demonstrated through the results achieved and the development of protocols that do not require specialized image processing algorithms and methods. This opens perspectives for further development of the approach on other coral reefs around the world.