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“Turning risk into value”

Corporate Overview

+61 7 3221 1102info@verterra.com.au

Who Are We?

Verterra is Australia’s first full service Ecological Engineering Company. Ecological engineering involves the design, construction and management of sustainable ecosystems that integrate society’s needs with the natural environment for the benefit of both. We turn risk into value for organisations seeking positive economic, environmental and community outcomes. Working in partnership with our clients, Verterra combines practical experience with scientific knowledge of soils, vegetation and water to design customised, profitable solutions for complex environmental and industrial problems.

Verterra has integrated capabilities in research, consulting and operational management for delivery of environmental services and production of bio-renewables from managed and natural vegetation. We service a wide range of industry sectors including oil and gas, mining, power and energy, water resources, forestry, bioenergy, agriculture, natural and renewable resources. Carbon abatement is a common theme across all sectors.

Overview

At Verterra we believe our future lies in a balance between minimising waste and efficient, innovative

utilisation of our resources to develop enduring solutions that turn today’s risk into tomorrow’s value.

To achieve this, we bring a combination of leading edge science with practical management experience and rational

economics to develop tailored solutions to environmental, resource and industrial problems.

We seek to identify solutions that address the underlying attributes of complex environmental problems based on sound

science underpinned by practical experience. Our solutions take a triple bottom line approach, aiming to deliver environmental benefits,

positive community outcomes and with sound financial returns.

Our values infuse our culture and are tightly linked to our sustainable competitive advantage. Above all, we value integrity, accountability, trust

and innovation.

Our Value Proposition

Service DeliveryVerterra is positioned as a Technology Transfer provider. We combine highly skilled and nationally certified environmental scientists, with experienced land, crop, irrigation and vegetation management practitioners, to develop and implement innovative end-to-end solutions. We deliver our services to the market via a variety of mechanisms, including research, consulting, and operational delivery. Our unique activity across the value chain from applied science to on-ground operations gives us the capacity to bring a holistic, integrated, solutions-based approach to service delivery.

We identify research needs and develop innovations that have the potential to reduce cost and improve efficiency. We work with our clients to design research programs, secure university research partners, and source funding to undertake applied research aimed at demonstrating potential and delivering tangible outcomes in the field.

Research and Advisory

We have implemented accredited project management and business systems for planning, procurement, implementation, quality control, safety, risk management and commissioning of large complex projects. Our capacity for operational delivery grounds our activities, ensuring that our research is relevant and our consulting advice is practical. It also underpins our capacity to leverage research to deliver innovation to our clients.

Operational Delivery

We focus on providing consulting services as a tailored solution. We aim to understand the attributes of the issues faced by our clients, identify the technically and practically viable solutions, then narrow down a sub-set of solutions that meet technical constraints, our clients’ objectives, and fit the wider community and land-use context.

Consulting

The combination of Verterra’s research and technical skills with practical management experience ensures reliable delivery of outcomes suited to our clients’ specific site conditions, expectations, operating constraints and compliance requirements.

Combined Service Offering

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Intellectual Property

In response to the need for an objective, consistent and process-based approach to optimising nutrient prescriptions for agricultural soils, and determining amelioration requirements for degraded soils, Verterra has developed the Soil Nutrition Optimisation and Limitations Amelioration Tool. The tool accounts for interactions and inter-dependencies between critical soil factors to provide soil amelioration prescriptions that remove substrate limitations to successful vegetation establishment.

VIP-SOILS

Through ACARP research (Applying risk-based principles of dispersive mine spoil behaviour to facilitate development of cost-effective best management practices), which itself is built on over 20 years of research, trials and practical experience in saline, sodic and degraded land rehabilitation, Verterra, in association with USQ, has developed a Bayesian Network-based Degraded and Dispersive Land Decision Support Tool and associated Best Management Practices to assist in managing the complex interaction of multiple design parameters in dispersive mine spoil rehabilitation.

VIP-REHAB

Verterra’s in-house agronomists, ecologists and foresters collectively bring over 100 years’ experience in pasture establishment and revegetation. This wealth of experience represents a significant bank of intellectual property in matching species and species-mixes to site conditions, sowing and application rates, and soil management requirements to maximise revegetation success.

VIP-SPECIES

Compliance requirements for beneficial use of biosolids focus strongly on minimisation of harm to human health and the environment. Verterra’s approach to beneficial use of biosolids treats compliance as a threshold requirement, and focuses on maximisation of soil health, crop production and environmental benefits. VIP-Biosolids takes an agronomic approach that ensures compliance requirements are met while addressing crop nutrient and soil management prescriptions to meet the objective of maximising benefits. The tool complements our complete management system for industrial-scale biosolids management.

VIP-BIOSOLIDS

Irrigation with poor quality waste water, particularly water with elevated sodicity, may result in degradation of soil structure, reduction in permeability, crop failure, increased erosion and environmental harm. Verterra engaged with the University of Southern Queensland to operationalise a procedure for assessment of soil threshold electrolyte concentration (TEC) – soil permeability response to sodic irrigation. This enables design of irrigation water quality treatment specifications to avoid adverse impacts.

VIP-TEC

Verterra brings a package of technologies together to deliver fully integrated, end-to-end solutions in beneficial use of waste waters for irrigated crop or vegetation applications. Our workflow approach, combined with our collective package of technologies, comprises our proprietary intellectual property that addresses technical, regulatory, commercial, operational and social aspects of waste water reuse.

VIP-WASTEWATER

Services and SectorsResources

Associated water reuseSite rehabilitationVegetation managementSodic soil managementCarbon offsets

Sodic soil managementRehab and RelinquishmentConservation geneticsBeneficial use of waste waterEnvironmental management

Ash dam rehabilitationCogeneration feedstocksCarbon offsetsEnvironmental offsetsContaminated land rehab.

Oil and Gas Mining Power

Water and Municipal

Catchment managementHabitat restorationIrrigation feasibilityErosion and sediment control

Beneficial effluent reuseBiosolids and compostingCarbon abatementSustainability planning

Environmental EconomicsNatural resource studiesEnvironmental planning

Water Municipal Government

Natural Resources

Native forest managementSalinity managementClimate change adaptationEnvironmental economics

Carbon farmingSoil carbonCarbon project aggregationCarbon project review

Flora and fauna monitoringWatershed protectionHabitat restorationConservation genetics

NaturalResources Carbon Environment

Renewable Resources

Soil surveyingTimber productionTree breedingYield and economic modelling

Fodder productionCarbon farmingHolistic farm planningSoil health and nutrition

Feedstock breedingCrop site selectionFeedstock productionFeedstock aggregation

Forestry Agriculture Bioenergy

Infrastructure, Industry and Urban Development

Vegetation managementOffsetsNatural buffers

OffsetsWaste water reuseNatural buffers

Water sensitive urban designNatural buffersHeat island management

Urban DevelopmentIndustryInfrastructure

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Specialist Capabilities

Verterra has capacity for photogrammetric landform surface mapping and DEM construction to quantify changes in landform over time due to erosion. By enabling full spatial enumeration of soil movement, as opposed to point-based sampling, digital terrain mapping enables quantitative assessment of erosion with a high level of confidence to identify target areas for remedial works. Digital photogrammetric mapping can also be used to measure tree height.

Digital Landform and Terrain Mapping

Verterra’s drone is equipped with a multispectral camera that allows a number of indexes to be calculated including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Modified Soil-adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI). These measure the amount and health of live vegetation and/or bare soil via the difference between the reflected intensity of near infra-red and visible light. This provides the ability to quantify revegetation success, identify areas requiring remedial treatment, and ‘bio-assay’ variation in soil conditions to inform targeted soil sampling to inform required soil amendments.

Multi-Spectral Imaging

Verterra has in-house drone capability with a Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) issued Remote Operators Certificate (ReOC) and trained and licenced remote pilot (RePL) operators. Verterra implements routine job hazard assessment procedures, pre-flight planning, and flight operating procedures as required by CASA regulations in connection with all flight operations. Our licence permits commercial use of drones up to 25kg.

Commercial UAV Operation

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The standard methodology for bio-condition assessment (Eyre et al., 2015) employs a transect methodology suitable for use in natural forests, however, this is not always appropriate in rehabilitated landscapes. Verterra has developed a modified approach to bio-condition assessment utilising circular plots and applied this widely, including compliance-based projects where the modified procedures have been approved by both Federal and State regulators.

Vegetation Bio-Condition Monitoring

Verterra utilises a combination of soil permeability assessment approaches. We incorporate ring permeameters (surface soils) and Guelph permeameters (sub-soils), as an efficient means to rapidly obtain replicate measurements to provide a statistically defined level of confidence in permeability, a critical indictor of changes in soil health.

Soil Permeability Assessment

Verterra deploys electromagnetic conduction instruments, including the EM38, as an efficient means to stratify variations in soil properties to inform targeted soil sampling. Applications have included assessment of soil variation on a 5,000 ha property for irrigation development, mapping variation in soil salinity for species-provenance field trials in Tanzania, and assessment of variation in mine spoil rehabilitation success to inform sampling for design of remedial treatments.

Digital Soil Mapping

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Seminal Projects

Santos required a practical, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable way to manage large volumes of saline-sodic coal seam gas (CSG) water (in excess of 10ML/day). Verterra developed a concept design, undertook feasibility studies, assisted with regulatory approvals and project managed delivery of 1,250 ha of irrigated native eucalypt forest and 300 ha of pivot irrigated Leucaena at Fairview and Springwater near Injune, the first project of its kind in Australia.

Oil and Gas

It is estimated that the current instantaneous liability for rehabilitating dispersive spoil dumps is $2 to $3 billion for the Bowen Basin in Queensland, and significantly more nationally. Verterra undertook a program of research in collaboration with USQ, Anglo Coal, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Peabody and New Hope to develop a quantitative model describing dispersive spoil behaviour; Best Management Practices for dispersive spoil rehabilitation; and costed, risk-based decision tools to support practical, cost-effective management of dispersive spoil.

Mining

RATCH Australia required a practical, cost-effective approach to achieving regulatory approval for closure of a disused ash-dam, ensure no long-term environmental liability, and to support productive, post-closure land use. Verterra undertook a risk-based approach to identify the core issues for development of appropriate management measures, complemented by adaptive remedial treatment. This provided an, evidence-based rationale for negotiation with the regulator on what is believed to be the first approval for Environmental Authority relinquishment of an ash dam in Queensland.

Power and Energy

Seqwater required cost-effective revegetation to meet approval conditions for environmental corridor re-establishment and carbon sequestration as part of the Wyaralong Dam construction. By evaluating and understanding the ecology of the areas required for revegetation, and bringing a robust, industrial approach to revegetation works, Verterra was able to package a range of measures to significantly reduce large scale (>400 ha) revegetation costs and deliver a high-quality revegetation outcome.

Water Resources

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Santos established Western White Gum plantations as a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable solution to management of coal seam gas water. Verterra identified the opportunity to register Santos’ plantations under the Carbon Farming Initiative, and presented an unsolicited proposal. In collaboration with Corporate Carbon, Verterra registered a carbon sequestration project and undertook detailed inventory to create Australian Carbon Credit Units, generating a return from what was originally a liability.

Carbon

Unitywater’s Maleny sewage treatment plant produces A-grade effluent that carries a residual nutrient load. Removal of these nutrients to a level suitable for release to the environment is expensive using traditional water treatment methods. The plant is located in a sensitive environmental region, approximately 10 km upstream of a major drinking water supply dam. Verterra constructed a planted rainforest and irrigation system to provide final stage nutrient removal, a green engineering solution, at 15% the cost of a grey solution.

Municipal

Government policy sought to establish hardwood plantations in South East Queensland to provide future resource following the planned exit from native forest logging in 2025. Key Verterra staff developed silvicultural systems and new genetics for industrial-scale establishment of hardwood forestry in SEQ. This also included a range of novel business models to access private land, and an intensive stakeholder engagement program that overcame community resistance to introduction of tree crops into agricultural land.

Forestry

Abengoa Energy Crops sought to develop fit-for-purpose, high productivity, high calorific value germplasm as a link in establishing a bioenergy feedstock supply chain. Verterra applied index selection to identify hybrid combinations that would maximise the core breeding objective, and meet secondary objectives of frost and salinity tolerance. Verterra identified novel candidate hybrid combinations never previously trialled, and established a breeding program to produce hybrids for field trials.

Bioenergy

Management of Bell Minor Associated Dieback in the Gondwana Rainforest World Heritage Area required mapping spatial variation in forest condition over ~100,000 ha. In collaboration with National Parks staff, Verterra refined an aerial survey method that enabled 32% of the project area (~32,000 ha) to be sampled in 10 days. Verterra delivered high resolution mapping to inform effective management, together with an approach that can be continually updated by the client’s staff.

Natural Resource Management

“Turning risk into value”

Contact Us

Other Locations130A Long Street19 Sheehan StPelican Creek Road68 Ahaftesbury Avenue62 Coolamon RoadOmega House, 3rd floor

South Toowoomba QLD 3450Townsville QLD 4180Collinsville QLD 4804Bayswater WA 6053Taroona TAS 7053Kigali, Rwanda

+61 7 3221 1102+61 7 3221 1102+61 7 3221 1102+61 4 1790 5644+61 4 3588 9592+250 738 304 070

Head Office97 Creek Street, Brisbane QLD 4000+61 7 3221 1102info@verterra.com.auverterra.com.au