The aim of this document is to describe the socio-demographic, environmental and health-related profile of the population in the Frankston - Mornington Peninsula region, an area south-east of Melbourne, Australia. This population profile serves as an important information source for understanding the context for the National Centre for Healthy Ageing (NCHA) Data Platform. It is also a guide to the types of demographic and spatial data that are available, for potential linkage with electronic health records (EHR) data held within the Healthy Ageing Data Platform and provides context for researchers using data from the Data Platform.

The 2014 Town and Community Profiles bring together information on more than 1000 Victorian communities from a wide variety of sources, both internal and external to the Department of Health and Department of Human Services. The Profiles include information on population, geography, services and facilities, and social, cultural and demographic characteristics of each suburb, town and rural catchment in Victoria.

The 2014 Town and Community Profiles bring together information on more than 1000 Victorian communities from a wide variety of sources, both internal and external to the Department of Health and Department of Human Services. The Profiles include information on population, geography, services and facilities, and social, cultural and demographic characteristics of each suburb, town and rural catchment in Victoria.

The 2014 Town and Community Profiles bring together information on more than 1000 Victorian communities from a wide variety of sources, both internal and external to the Department of Health and Department of Human Services. The Profiles include information on population, geography, services and facilities, and social, cultural and demographic characteristics of each suburb, town and rural catchment in Victoria.

The Local Government Area profiles are produced annually, from data provided by a range of sources. The profiles currently include around 140 indicators relating to population, socio-demographics, …Show full descriptionThe Local Government Area profiles are produced annually, from data provided by a range of sources. The profiles currently include around 140 indicators relating to population, socio-demographics, health status and health utilisation. Each indicator is provided as a rate for the LGA, and a ranking of the LGA against all 79 LGAs for that indicator. The LGA profiles also include definitions for each data item, with a description, data source and currency.

Fire is an integral part of savanna ecology and changes in fire patterns are linked to biodiversity loss in savannas worldwide. In Australia, changed fire regimes are implicated in the contemporary declines of small mammals, riparian species, obligate-seeding plants and grass seed-eating birds. Translating this knowledge into management to recover threatened species has proved elusive. We report here on a landscape-scale experiment carried out by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) on Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary in northwest Australia. The experiment was designed to understand the response of a key savanna bird guild to fire, and to use that information to manage fire with the aim of recovering a threatened species population. We compared condition indices among three seed-eating bird species–one endangered (Gouldian finch) and two non-threatened (long-tailed finch and double-barred finch)—from two large areas (> 2,830 km2) with initial contrasting fire regimes (‘extreme’: frequent, extensive, intense fire; versus ‘benign’: less frequent, smaller, lower intensity fires). Populations of all three species living with the extreme fire regime had condition indices that differed from their counterparts living with the benign fire regime, including higher haematocrit levels in some seasons (suggesting higher levels of activity required to find food), different seasonal haematocrit profiles, higher fat scores in the early wet season (suggesting greater food uncertainty), and then lower muscle scores later in the wet season (suggesting prolonged food deprivation). Gouldian finches also showed seasonally increasing stress hormone concentrations with the extreme fire regime. Cumulatively, these patterns indicated greater nutritional stress over many months for seed-eating birds exposed to extreme fire regimes. We tested these relationships by monitoring finch condition over the following years, as AWC implemented fire management to produce the ‘benign’ fire regime throughout the property. The condition indices of finch populations originally living with the extreme fire regime shifted to resemble those of their counterparts living with the benign fire regime. This research supports the hypothesis that fire regimes affect food resources for savanna seed-eating birds, with this impact mediated through a range of grass species utilised by the birds over different seasons, and that fire management can effectively moderate that impact. This work provides a rare example of applied research supporting the recovery of a population of a threatened species.