Australian softwood plantations (mostly pine) take around 25–30 years to grow before they are harvested for timber. Until recently, growers had to wait until harvest to know whether the wood would be strong and suitable for building. Now, thanks to our research, you can effectively peek into the future to make better decisions about how long to grow the trees, how to manage them, or which areas of the plantation have the highest value.

Invasive pests and diseases are one of the greatest threats to forests worldwide, undermining livelihoods, food security and regional economies. Two internationally collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects are tackling this challenge at multiple levels, from supporting Ethiopian farmers to manage pests and diseases of forest crops, to building an effective forest biosecurity network in Southeast Asia to prevent invasive pests and diseases from spreading rapidly across borders and devastating forests and trees. 

A new research project funded by AFWI Centre for Sustainable Futures will accelerate automation in Australia’s plantation forestry sector. The project, titled SilvaNaut: Incorporating Autonomous Operation into Australian Forest Machinery – Robotic Weed Control Conditions, directly supports AFWI’s theme of making the most of our available wood fibre by enabling safer, more efficient and higher-yield forest operations.

Australia produces around 2.5 million tonnes of timber waste each year, much of which ends up in landfill. The Timber Circularity Project is working to change that by identifying safe, practical pathways to keep these valuable resources in use. By understanding the materials, regulations, and logistics involved, the project supports Australia’s shift to a circular economy and helps unlock new solutions for end-of-life timber.

The Consortium's primary goal is to maintain and increase the productive capacity of the Australian forest industry by diversifying the range of effective, environmentally and socially acceptable pesticide and control methods for weeds, pests and diseases while developing and promoting industry best practices.

The main goal of this research is to map fire risk probability, predict fire points and model fire spread across flammable forest areas in Australia to develop a fire risk probability model using a two-step analytic hierarchy process approach with cross-validations of support vector machine model outputs.

The National Bushfire Resilience Network (NOBURN) is a citizen science project empowering people to use their mobile phones to collect information that will help predict bushfire hotspots and minimise their impact.

Small hive beetle continues to be a major threat to the Australian honeybee industry and its estimated $14.2 billion annual pollination services. A recent project saw significant progress made towards developing a mass trapping technology.

The primary goal of this research is to evaluate the quality and energy potential of softwood plantation harvest residues from southeast Queensland, and assess the impact of different comminution methods (chipping or grinding) and, specifically for chipping, the effects of screening.

This research aims to deliver improved biosecurity outcomes for the Australian avocado industry through implementing a range of industry preparedness and prevention strategies.

The primary goal of this project is to improve ginger, to future proof the industry against major pest and diseases. This project aims to reduce risks to the industry, which is reliant on two varieties: ‘Queensland’ and ‘Canton’.

Pine thinning residues left in situ increase fire risk. The project will examine the cost/benefit of treating thinning residues in terms of fire risk mitigation and nutrient retention.

This PhD project will use MinION technology to rapidly detect and identify exotic viruses in imported seeds. This technology will make seed imports cheaper and safer. This project is part of the Plant Innovation Centre.

The primary goal of this project is to improve timber supply and income for Papua New Guinea and Cape York Peninsula landholders through development of smallholder planted forests by increasing germplasm supply and refining working models for viable smallholder teak and Indigenous sandalwood production.

This project's primary goal is to develop and implement sustainable management for key insect pests and diseases of Acacia, Eucalyptus and Moringa in Ethiopia to strengthen and sustain livelihoods and forest enterprises.

The primary goal of this project is to improve food security, including labour use efficiency, and resilience of agricultural systems in Timor-Leste to meet the livelihood needs of rural householders and it focuses on the scaling and adoption pathways of technologies and knowledge developed in Al-Com 1.

The primary goal of this project is to establish an effective and sustainable forest health and biosecurity network in SE Asia to improve risk management for invasive forest pests and diseases.

This project's primary goal is to restore some of the long-term rainforest plots that were established 70+ years ago by the Qld Dept of Forestry to study the effects of different forestry and silviculture practices on tree growth.

This project aims to use remote-sensing identification of eligible planting areas and planning for plantation establishment activities.

Through this project, we aim to demonstrate best-practice establishment of socioeconomic baselines and monitoring for impacts of community-based reforestation for carbon projects.

This project aims to give us an understanding of grass-seedling interactions and Imperata cylindrica ecology to maximise labour investment during tree planting and maintenance for improved seedling growth and survival.

The project's goal is to understand soil water availability across sloping, degraded tropical landscapes and how this varies across seasons in response to rainfall across wetter/drier periods. A combined approach integrating environmental monitoring data, soil sampling for stable water isotope analysis and drone-based multispectral, thermal and LiDAR data.

This project aims to provide a contemporary understanding of the concept, interventions, and impact of ANR restoration approach, analysing its carbon, biodiversity, and livelihood potentials as well as its constraints in the Philippines.

The primary goal of this project is to unravel drivers of variation in soil fungi and bacteria community characteristics through soil eDNA analysis across spatial and temporal scales in a dynamic of natural regeneration within minimally managed Acacia mangium plantations.

Research to understand how existing carbon pools across degraded tropical upland regions vary with land use history and abiotic characteristics. 

Research to understand the challenges and potential for developing effective incentivisation mechanisms, in the form of livelihoods, to engage people in large scale community-based reforestation. 

The primary goal of this project is to bridge the knowledge gap between inclusive value chain development (IVCD) and forest landscape restoration (FLR) using case studies in the Philippines.

The project's goal is to identify key health and safety risks for community-based reforestation projects in the tropics and effective mitigation measures to protect people and the environment. We aim to improve safety and efficiency of other community-based projects globally by sharing our experiences designing, implementing and iteratively revising HSSE agendas. 

The aim is to propose and assess the pros and cons of different institutional arrangement archetypes and mechanisms of collaboration on initiatives based on community-based reforestation for carbon. This work examines through a political economy and inter-sectional lenses potential opportunities and pitfalls for participating communities of existing arrangements promoting community-based reforestation in the context of carbon outcomes and consequences for effective, efficient, and equitable benefit-sharing results.

The primary goal of this project is to develop the interests, knowledge and skills of Tiwi Traditional Owners (from all eight clans) to participate in an Indigenous-led commercial native forestry industry, including supporting community capacity to operate viable place-based native forestry and timber processing/manufacturing enterprises.

The goal is to identify factors linked with parasitism by different nematode strains in Australia, examine temporal and spatial trends in parasitism by biocontrol wasps, and develop recommendations for sustainable and cost-effective management of Sirex in Australia.

The project aims to improve the current model’s accuracy, reliability and responsiveness to climate by calibrating the model using existing and newly developed data sets. Collaboration with national and international partners will be developed to access new data sets and case studies to validate the model with real-world examples of durability monitoring data. 

Smouldering is a major problem associated with the use of chromated copper arsenate (CCA) in bushfire prone areas and threatens continued use of this preservative. We have begun a PhD project to look at low cost, leach-resistant additives that can be added to treatment solutions to reduce the risk of smouldering without affecting performance.

We propose a broader evaluation of the denser hardwoods for their fire behaviour as well as further studies to characterise other timber aspects such as anatomical features and extractives content that might be combined to predict fire behaviour. The results could provide opportunities for use of other species to meet the exterior exposure needs in bushfire prone areas.

Timber connections are critical for building performance. In previous work, we examined the effects of repeated wetting and drying as well as fungal attack on the capacity of nailed connections of solid timber. These results were primarily applied and there is a critical need to better understand the environment around the fastener as it is affected by both moisture movement and fungal attack.

Preservative treated timber is an increasingly important segment of the timber industry. There are over 115 Australian treating plants registered with the Timber Preservers Association of Australia plus many international plants supplying the building market. While AS/NZS1604 specifies a quality assurance program, there is no system for ensuring that material meets these standards.

The project aims to continue durability assessment and maintenance of the Centre’s large-scale collaborative field trial, initially on an annual basis. Assessments will include conventional probing to measure the effects of bio-degradation in test samples, in addition (where appropriate) to static and non-destructive testing (NDT) to measure the mechanical properties of beams. 

The project aims to continue durability assessment and maintenance of the Centre’s large-scale collaborative field trial, initially on an annual basis.

We are restoring deforested and degraded landscapes in the Philippines to learn more about implementing reforestation projects in tropical countries. The project provides a living laboratory, a unique opportunity for research on key knowledge gaps on how to implement reforestation at scale with communities for socioeconomic and environmental benefits.