Collections and Climate Change Digital Story: Victorian Cultural Network, Australia
Frogs and Bushfire is one of the stories in the online Collections and Climate Change Project. Source: Museums Victoria. Photographer: David Paul.
This is an Australian project created by Wind and Sky Productions for Culture Victoria, the public face of the Victorian Cultural Network. It was developed in collaboration with three Victorian Cultural organisations: Museums Victoria, the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Parks Victoria.
Already in the state of Victoria in South-eastern Australia we are seeing evidence of climate change. In the natural world, coastal waters are warming and bringing tropical marine species to our bays. Desert animals are migrating to Victoria. Alpine winters are changing, potentially pushing species closer to the margins. In the world of humans, island and coastal dwellers deal with the tangible and intangible impacts of loss as sea levels rise, bush dwellers live with an increased risk of life-threatening fires and farmers cope with the new normal of longer droughts.
This Collections and Climate Change digital story explores how Victoria’s scientific and cultural collections help us understand climate change. It looks at how the information can help us understand and prepare for a hotter, drier, more inundated world.
The story is made up of a short documentary film and twenty-one examples highlighting how botanical records, geological and biological specimens and living flora and fauna provide a crucial resource for scientists striving to map continuity, variability and change in the natural world. And it helps us rethink the significance of some of Victoria’s cultural collections in the face of a changing climate.
https://cv.vic.gov.au/stories/land-and-ecology/collections-and-climate-change/
For more information on this project, please contact: Lucinda Horrocks, Producer, Wind & Sky Productions Pty Ltd. Eemail: lucinda@windsky.com.au | web: http://windsky.com.au/
Submitted by Kate Phillips, Senior Curator, Science Exhibitions, Museums Victoria kphillips@museum.vic.gov.au
October 7, 2019