OZPACS is a working group focused on human impacts on the Australian environment over the last 500+ years, and is intended to provide a forum for constructive dialogue with natural resource managers. The OZPACS project is not for primary research but instead seeks to build a research network, collate existing research efforts, identify and prioritise knowledge gaps, provide early career initiatives and enhance our research environment and potential.

The aims of the project are:
• To assemble palaeoenvironmental data covering the last 500 years for Australia and establish an accessible spatial database (GIS-based);
• To document ecosystem change over the last five centuries to aid managers formulate targets for restoration and assess heritage significance;
• To assess the range of technologies available to reconstruct human impacts on the environment over the last 500 years;
• To share experiences of techniques used in short term palaeoenvironmental studies in order to develop ‘best practice’ protocols;
• To establish a list of high priority sites, i.e., those of greatest potential, in order to help future researchers contribute to a more comprehensive assessment of recent human impact across a wide range of Australian ecosystems.

The OZPACS working group is funded through the ARC funded ‘Environmental Futures Network’ (EFN) (http://www.adelaide.edu.au/efn/). The OZPACS project is the Australian contribution to the PAGES Focus 5 project (http://www.liv.ac.uk/geography/PAGESFocus5/aboutF5.htm). OZPACS focuses on recent human impacts, using a wide variety of palaeoenvironmental archives and proxies. OZPACS was deliberately envisaged as a project relating to short-time scales.
Extract from: Gell, P., Mooney, S., Bickford, S. and Denham, T., 2006. OZPACS: Recent impacts on Australian ecosystems (Workshop report). Quaternary Australasia, 24 (1), 10-11.

This webpage provides links to the various aspects of the OZPACS database. The database comprises:
    1. Metadatasets assembling previous palaeoenvironmental work: Charcoal, charophytes, diatoms, invertebrates, macrofossils, geochronology, pollen and sediment modelling. Available as Excel files.
    2. Reference list in both Endnote and Rich Text formats, and a list of keywords to be used for searching the Endnote files.
    3. List of site locations and unique identification numbers, in Excel format.
    4. Fully georeferenced maps showing the sites for each metadataset.
    5. Raw data files (in Excel format): Radiocarbon dates from published work for the last 1000 yr BP, Lake Euramoo pollen data from A. P. Kershaw (PhD thesis, 1973).

Acknowledgments:
OZPACS Convenors: Peter Gell (Adelaide), Scott Mooney (UNSW), Sophie Bickford (Monash), Tim Denham (Monash)
Database assembly: Kathryn Fitzsimmons (ANU), Tim Barrows (ANU)
GIS: Sophie Bickford (Monash)
Contributors: Tim Denham (archaeology – Monash), Kathryn Fitzsimmons (OSL dating - ANU), Stephen Gale (sediment modelling – U. Syd.), Adriana García (charophytes - UOW), Simon Haberle (pollen - ANU), Gary Hancock (210Pb, 137Cs and OSL dating - CSIRO), Jennifer Harrison (210Pb and 137Cs dating - ANSTO), Henk Heijnis (palaeolimnology - ANSTO), Peter Kershaw (pollen - Monash), Tara Lewis (macrofossils - Monash), Jeff Parr (phytoliths - SCU), Nicholas Porch (invertebrates - ANU), Matiu Prebble (pollen - ANU), Krystyna Saunders (palaeolimnology – U. Tas.), Kathryn Taffs (palaeolimnology - SCU)