Traditional Owner-led restoration of urban billabongs. This Indigenous scientist led project aims to investigate the past and present fire, flooding and vegetation dynamics of urban billabongs through paleoenvironmental assays (sediment cores) and field surveys of vegetation, faunal and water quality responses to cultural burns and floods. In partnership with Melbourne Water and Traditional Owners, this innovative project intends to develop and combine historical and contemporary ecological and ....Traditional Owner-led restoration of urban billabongs. This Indigenous scientist led project aims to investigate the past and present fire, flooding and vegetation dynamics of urban billabongs through paleoenvironmental assays (sediment cores) and field surveys of vegetation, faunal and water quality responses to cultural burns and floods. In partnership with Melbourne Water and Traditional Owners, this innovative project intends to develop and combine historical and contemporary ecological and Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and apply it to better manage culturally and ecologically significant billabongs in one of Australia’s largest cities. This project expects to provide a template for effective Traditional Owner-led restoration and management of our threatened urban wetlands.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130101410
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$374,080.00
Summary
To die or not to die: understanding the energetics of death in nature. By better understanding how and why organisms die, we can improve treatment and prevention of age-related diseases such as cancer. This study will use the northern quoll as a model to examine the environmental, behavioural and physiological mechanisms associated with shortened or extended lifespan in nature.
Restoring & future-proofing the biocultural values of endangered seagrasses. This project aims to develop best-practice methods for the biocultural restoration of the endangered seagrass Posidonia australis. This species is highly productive, supports fisheries and biodiversity, and plays a key role in mitigating climate change. This project will generate valuable new genetic information to guide restoration strategies including climate-adjusted genotypes. Working with Indigenous groups, we aim ....Restoring & future-proofing the biocultural values of endangered seagrasses. This project aims to develop best-practice methods for the biocultural restoration of the endangered seagrass Posidonia australis. This species is highly productive, supports fisheries and biodiversity, and plays a key role in mitigating climate change. This project will generate valuable new genetic information to guide restoration strategies including climate-adjusted genotypes. Working with Indigenous groups, we aim to document and restore cultural values associated with Posidonia. Working with industrial designers, we seek to develop cost-effective techniques to scale-up seagrass restoration. This research should provide significant environmental, economic, social and cultural benefits by improving seagrass restoration.Read moreRead less
Tracking 3000 years of agricultural adaptation to the resource poor, climate sensitive and remote Solomon Islands using biomarkers and palaeoecology. Establishing research programs with Pacific neighbours benefits Australia's relations with Pacific Island countries generally. This project applies novel research methods to understanding human adaptations to long-term environmental and climatic fluctuations. It will address the National Research Priority goal of responding to climate variability b ....Tracking 3000 years of agricultural adaptation to the resource poor, climate sensitive and remote Solomon Islands using biomarkers and palaeoecology. Establishing research programs with Pacific neighbours benefits Australia's relations with Pacific Island countries generally. This project applies novel research methods to understanding human adaptations to long-term environmental and climatic fluctuations. It will address the National Research Priority goal of responding to climate variability by advancing our understanding of recent climate change in the Australia/Pacific region. It will show that Australian researchers can play a significant role in understanding the spread of humans across the Pacific, and the environmental adaptations required by populations in resource depleted environments. It will increase collaboration between research institutions focusing on the Australia/Pacific region.Read moreRead less
Sustainable development in southwestern Victoria: construction of a baseline palaeoecological record for assessment of past and future human-environment interactions. A detailed, continuous, sediment-based, multi-proxy palaeoenvironment record, will be constructed to contribute to the goals of the innovative, community-based Lake Condah Sustainability Development Project that are informed management and heritage listing of the Mt Eccles lava flow region, southwestern Victoria. The record, coveri ....Sustainable development in southwestern Victoria: construction of a baseline palaeoecological record for assessment of past and future human-environment interactions. A detailed, continuous, sediment-based, multi-proxy palaeoenvironment record, will be constructed to contribute to the goals of the innovative, community-based Lake Condah Sustainability Development Project that are informed management and heritage listing of the Mt Eccles lava flow region, southwestern Victoria. The record, covering at least the last 20,000 years, is designed to (a) provide a dated framework for understanding past human-environment relationships, especially the development of a unique Aboriginal complex hunter-gatherer society based on aquaculture, (b) an historical basis for fire management of a nationally important vegetation community and (c) the provision of a palaeoclimate record of global significance.Read moreRead less
Global patterns of mammalian biodiversity loss over the last 50,000 years. Wild mammals have experienced major population losses and extinctions in recent centuries, but their communities had already suffered from widespread losses during the Pleistocene. Existing literature has focused on documenting individual extinctions or continental-scale patterns. This project aims to show how biodiversity loss played out at the local scale around the world. It will use palaeontological and zooarchaeologi ....Global patterns of mammalian biodiversity loss over the last 50,000 years. Wild mammals have experienced major population losses and extinctions in recent centuries, but their communities had already suffered from widespread losses during the Pleistocene. Existing literature has focused on documenting individual extinctions or continental-scale patterns. This project aims to show how biodiversity loss played out at the local scale around the world. It will use palaeontological and zooarchaeological data to show how losses varied in space, how population sizes changed, and how species attributes such as rarity and body size related to loss. The world of mammals has become more homogeneous as biodiversity has declined. The challenge is to show how that happened across space and time.
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Reconstructing past population dynamics to understand human and climatic impacts in prehistory. More than 100 species have become extinct since humans first colonised Australia, and over 1000 are considered threatened. This research will determine the factors most strongly governing the interaction between humans and native fauna in Australia over the last 46 millennia. Our approach is powerful and novel because it will effectively draw together multidisciplinary evidence on natural resource exp ....Reconstructing past population dynamics to understand human and climatic impacts in prehistory. More than 100 species have become extinct since humans first colonised Australia, and over 1000 are considered threatened. This research will determine the factors most strongly governing the interaction between humans and native fauna in Australia over the last 46 millennia. Our approach is powerful and novel because it will effectively draw together multidisciplinary evidence on natural resource exploitation and habitat alteration by ancient people, and the influence of dramatic climatic shifts on the Australian biota. Information on past biological responses to environmental change is critical to properly contextualising the current impact, and long-term consequences of, threats such as global warming, habitat loss and invasive species.Read moreRead less
Human Impact and Environmental Change in the Lower Yangtze Delta, China. Based upon a combination of sediment-based proxies of palaeoenvironmental conditions this project attempts to link existing models of geomorphological and climatic variability for the Yangtze Delta to cultural changes evident in archaeological and historical records. The Yangtze valley was the home of agriculture in Asia and hence for the beginnings of village life and Chinese culture. The delta region has prograded over 10 ....Human Impact and Environmental Change in the Lower Yangtze Delta, China. Based upon a combination of sediment-based proxies of palaeoenvironmental conditions this project attempts to link existing models of geomorphological and climatic variability for the Yangtze Delta to cultural changes evident in archaeological and historical records. The Yangtze valley was the home of agriculture in Asia and hence for the beginnings of village life and Chinese culture. The delta region has prograded over 100 km since the early Holocene and there is a well- preserved succession of Neolithic and modern cultures across its surface. The project investigates the relative impact of Holocene river migration, sealevel and climate change on societies, and also the relative impact of societies on vegetation, eutrophication and erosion while the region was converted to an anthropogenic landscape. The results will enable models of human-environmental interactions to be compared with those developed for
Europe, Africa, Australia and the Middle East.Read moreRead less
Evolution of palaeoenvironments on the volcanic landscapes of West New Britain, P.N.G. This research will define and explain the responses of environmental processes to catastrophic vulcanism in West New Britain (P.N.G.) during the last 10,000 years. It will provide a crucial perspective to our understanding of past human-landscape relationships, thus filling an important gap in models, of social response to environmental conditions, which are merging from current archaeological and palaeoenviro ....Evolution of palaeoenvironments on the volcanic landscapes of West New Britain, P.N.G. This research will define and explain the responses of environmental processes to catastrophic vulcanism in West New Britain (P.N.G.) during the last 10,000 years. It will provide a crucial perspective to our understanding of past human-landscape relationships, thus filling an important gap in models, of social response to environmental conditions, which are merging from current archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research. The project will develop predictive models for environmental recovery under various conditions. The close relationship between this research and the ground breaking regional archaeological study allows this unique case study to contribute to a global discussion of past human-landscape relationships.Read moreRead less
Factors controlling marine food webs: consumer vs. nutrient limitation of mobile invertebrates and algae. An understanding of the strength of interactions in marine food webs is crucial to predicting change in coastal habitats due to human activities. The outcomes of this research will indicate the relative importance of changes in nutrient inputs from terrestrial runoff (eutrophication) and predation pressures (via overfishing) - both of which may strongly affect the structure of marine habitat ....Factors controlling marine food webs: consumer vs. nutrient limitation of mobile invertebrates and algae. An understanding of the strength of interactions in marine food webs is crucial to predicting change in coastal habitats due to human activities. The outcomes of this research will indicate the relative importance of changes in nutrient inputs from terrestrial runoff (eutrophication) and predation pressures (via overfishing) - both of which may strongly affect the structure of marine habitats - on an extremely abundant and diverse component of coastal marine habitats.Read moreRead less