Ameliorating Agriculture, Cultivating Biodiversity

Christie Stewart is the winner of the 2015 HASSELL Travelling Scholarship – Robin Edmond Award, which recognises outstanding graduating landscape architecture students. The winner is afforded the opportunity to expand education through travel to places of significance to their academic focus.Christie hopes the scholarships will enable her to visit agricultural properties which are successful in sustaining natural biodiversity.

Her outstanding research project, Ameliorating Agriculture: Cultivating Biodiversity, explored the integration of environmental and ecological systems design with emerging precision agriculture technology as an innovative approach to the sustainability challenges facing broadacre farmers in Western Australia's Wheatbelt.

HASSELL Head of Landscape Architecture, Angus Bruce said Christie's connections to the land were clear in her research. "We were also impressed by the innovative way Christie integrated techniques that aren't generally used by landscape architects". Using her family's farm in the Wongan-Ballidu Shire as a test case, Christie investigated the sources of degradation in both the farm and the regional landscape. Her ultimate goal is to achieve an integrated agricultural framework that can secure long-term farming viability by establishing a regenerative synergy between agricultural and ecological landscapes.

"A life spent on the farm prompted my research into connection to place, spirituality and what it means to belong as part of a place".

She lamented that "marginal economy of scale and a succession of dry years, coupled with our large percentage of heavy clay soil fringing the hills had pushed her family to the edge. It was heart wrenching when we had to sell our farm in 2012"."When the farm sold, I still wanted to continue with the project as I was in a unique position. Landscape Architectural design relies on creative thinking coupled with site analysis: I had accumulated 27 years of intimate knowledge of the place, along with knowledge passed down through my father and grandfather. I couldn't bear for this connection to evaporate, and I wanted to use it to set up a design framework to help other farmers in similar situations".

Using geographic information systems (GIS) and an iterative design process, this project aimed to test if emerging precision agriculture (including water use efficiency, yield mapping and controlled traffic farming) can be integrated with environmental and ecological system design.

Precision agriculture aims to improve a farmer's ability to manage variables within a paddock. It provides tools to quantify soil, terrain and crop variability, allowing customised agronomic applications and practises.

The design process involved an extensive literature review, coupled with hand drawn and GIS mapping of the problems associated with the health of the ecological and agricultural systems. Several series of mapping data were generated to analyse the vegetation complex, hydrology, salinity, geology and agricultural processes and practises. This was carried out at both a farm and regional scale.

A series of concepts were then generated. The research shows that although much can be done on an individual farm to improve yield, most of the solutions, such as reversing salinity and reconnecting fragmented vegetation, require a regional and catchment approach.

"Although this project has been successful, I feel that I've only uncovered the tip of the iceberg: there is much more research to be undertaken. I am now practising as a Landscape Architect at UDLA in Fremantle, and am expanding on my honours research to further explore what can be done to ensure broadacre farming viability into the future".