Smoke from domestic wood heaters remains a significant source of air pollution in some urban areas, regional towns and lower-density settlements, often contributing up to 50 per cent of the PM2.5 pollution on winter days.

Two drivers are increasingly likely to shape Australia’s environmental challenges in the coming decades: population growth, distribution and composition; and economic activity.

By volume, dredging contributes the largest pressure associated with dumped wastes (not including marine debris, toxins, pesticides and herbicides) on the marine environment.

The production of goods and services requires energy and materials—metals, minerals, water, food and fibre—all of which come from the environment.

Marine ecosystems and their attributes, including species composition, ecosystem functions and resilience, are constantly changing.

The growing concentrations of human-generated GHGs have resulted in an increased absorption, largely in the lower atmosphere, of the heat radiated from Earth’s surface, causing an increase in the global (land and ocean) mean surface temperature of 0.85 ± 0.20 °C from 1880 to 2012 (

Australia has more than 100 laws and policy instruments addressing aspects of management of the marine environment, and many incorporate principles such as sustainable development (Haward & Vince 2008).

Much of Australia’s biodiversity is renowned for its ability to deal with massive ecosystem shocks (e.g. fire, extended periods of dry or wet, extreme weather events such as cyclones).

Multiple factors acting at various levels of organisation, from species to landscapes, will interact to determine resilience capacity.

PM2.5 is the finer particulate fraction of PM. PM2.5 particles are smaller, and therefore able to be transported further and persist for longer in the atmosphere than PM10.

Despite recognition that the pressures described in Pressures affecting biodiversity have a key role in shaping biodiversity at the species and community levels, the role of these pressures in shaping patterns and distribution of genetic di

Although isolated from other continents, Antarctica is connected to the rest of the world through oceanic and atmospheric circulations. Antarctica and the surrounding Southern Ocean are key drivers of Earth’s oceanic and atmospheric systems.

Groundwater systems are important in providing water resources for much of the country, and are subject to the pressures of climate (McFarlane et al. 2012), development and growth.

Identifying and protecting heritage places is fundamental to ensuring that they are appropriately conserved, celebrated and passed on to future generations. The reasons to consider heritage as a discrete part of the environment and to list heritage places include: