Ice sheet collapse, sea-level rise and Australian coastal response. The project is designed to contribute to answering important questions in climate change: Which polar ice sheets are the most vulnerable to warming? How fast will sea levels rise? What will be the impact on global coasts during the 21st century? The response of polar ice sheets to modest increases in global temperature and the rate of future sea-level rise remains highly uncertain. The project plans to examine the retreat of the ....Ice sheet collapse, sea-level rise and Australian coastal response. The project is designed to contribute to answering important questions in climate change: Which polar ice sheets are the most vulnerable to warming? How fast will sea levels rise? What will be the impact on global coasts during the 21st century? The response of polar ice sheets to modest increases in global temperature and the rate of future sea-level rise remains highly uncertain. The project plans to examine the retreat of the polar ice sheets during the last warm interglacial period and the sea-level record archived in the Australian coastal sediments and morphology. It plans to use this unique sea-level signal to fingerprint the ice sheets that contributed the excess meltwater to the oceans and to map the configuration of the southern Australian coast under higher sea levels than present.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE160100067
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$10,000,000.00
Summary
Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program:
This project is for a 5-year membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program, the world’s largest collaborative research program in earth and ocean sciences addressing international priorities. The program conducts seagoing coring expeditions and monitoring of instrumented boreholes to study the history and current activity of the Earth, recorded in sed ....Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program:
This project is for a 5-year membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program, the world’s largest collaborative research program in earth and ocean sciences addressing international priorities. The program conducts seagoing coring expeditions and monitoring of instrumented boreholes to study the history and current activity of the Earth, recorded in sediments and rocks below the seafloor. The program’s aims include understanding past global environments on multiple time scales, the deep biosphere, plate tectonics, occurrence and distribution of resources, and generation of hazards. Several multinational expeditions are scheduled and planned in our marine jurisdiction and within the Australasian region. Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE120100218
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$254,078.00
Summary
A world-class rock magnetic facility to support Australian palaeomagnetic and environmental research. Magnetic properties of rocks and environmental particles provide information about a vast range of geological and environmental processes. We propose to develop a facility that will enable detection and interpretation of these magnetic signals to aid understanding of climate change, mineral exploration, and the geological development of Australia.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE140100047
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$3,600,000.00
Summary
Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program: This project is for an Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. The Program will recover drill cores, situate observatories, and conduct down-hole experiments in all the world's oceans from lowest to highest latitudes to address fundamental questions about Earth's history and processes within four high-priority scientific themes: clima ....Australian Membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program: This project is for an Australian membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program. The Program will recover drill cores, situate observatories, and conduct down-hole experiments in all the world's oceans from lowest to highest latitudes to address fundamental questions about Earth's history and processes within four high-priority scientific themes: climate and ocean change - reading the past and informing the future; biosphere frontiers - deep life, biodiversity, and environmental forcing of ecosystems; earth connections - deep processes and their impact on earth's surface environment; earth in motion - processes and hazards on a human time scale.Read moreRead less
Holding coral reefs together with soluble cement. This project aims to characterise and understand cement formation in coral reefs. Coral reefs are constructed by cementing together aragonite building blocks made by corals. The main cementing agent is high-magnesium calcite, the most soluble carbonate mineral and susceptible to ocean acidification. High-magnesium calcite cements are best developed on the high energy margins of coral reefs. This project will quantify how crustose coralline algae ....Holding coral reefs together with soluble cement. This project aims to characterise and understand cement formation in coral reefs. Coral reefs are constructed by cementing together aragonite building blocks made by corals. The main cementing agent is high-magnesium calcite, the most soluble carbonate mineral and susceptible to ocean acidification. High-magnesium calcite cements are best developed on the high energy margins of coral reefs. This project will quantify how crustose coralline algae produces high-magnesium calcite and controls the dissolution and reprecipitation of high-magnesium cements. This project intends to quantify rates of reef cementation, susceptibility to ocean acidification and warming, and possible mitigating effects of alkalinity addition.Read moreRead less
Ocean currents and genetic connectedness in a complex archipelago. To what extent are marine coastal communities ?open?, i.e. how often do the oceans carry larvae far from their point of spawning, and what influence does such ocean transport have on the spread of genetic information? These are some of the most fundamental questions of biological oceanography; the project will provide new answers by using an extremely detailed genetic data set from the Houtman Abrolhos Islands off Western Austra ....Ocean currents and genetic connectedness in a complex archipelago. To what extent are marine coastal communities ?open?, i.e. how often do the oceans carry larvae far from their point of spawning, and what influence does such ocean transport have on the spread of genetic information? These are some of the most fundamental questions of biological oceanography; the project will provide new answers by using an extremely detailed genetic data set from the Houtman Abrolhos Islands off Western Australian together with an advanced numerical ocean model especially suited to that environment and developed in Australia.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100841
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$372,000.00
Summary
Movement patterns of marine megafauna at unprecedented global scales. This project aims to apply analyses from big data approaches to reveal movement patterns at unprecedented scales. Environmental legislation dictates that industries (e.g. oil and gas) reduce their effect on marine megafauna such as sharks, whales, or turtles. However, the extent of their effect is unknown, due to limited understanding of these animals’ movements. With large satellite tracking datasets now available, the challe ....Movement patterns of marine megafauna at unprecedented global scales. This project aims to apply analyses from big data approaches to reveal movement patterns at unprecedented scales. Environmental legislation dictates that industries (e.g. oil and gas) reduce their effect on marine megafauna such as sharks, whales, or turtles. However, the extent of their effect is unknown, due to limited understanding of these animals’ movements. With large satellite tracking datasets now available, the challenge is to develop a synthetic analytical approach to identify scaling laws and to understand global drivers of marine megafauna movement. Findings are expected to improve the ability to sustainably exploit marine resources while conserving biodiversity.Read moreRead less
Evaluating the influence of trophic connections between marine habitats on the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas. Marine ecosystems are characterized by trophic subsidies: consumers forage between habitats, and ungrazed primary production is exported as drift or detritus. However, the trophic relationships we see today may in a sense be unnatural, because intensive fishing of consumers may have fundamentally altered them.
We aim to evaluate the importance of the exchange of consumers and ....Evaluating the influence of trophic connections between marine habitats on the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas. Marine ecosystems are characterized by trophic subsidies: consumers forage between habitats, and ungrazed primary production is exported as drift or detritus. However, the trophic relationships we see today may in a sense be unnatural, because intensive fishing of consumers may have fundamentally altered them.
We aim to evaluate the importance of the exchange of consumers and drift between seagrass and reef habitats in Australia and North America. We aim to find out whether fishing alters these processes by studying marine protected areas in both continents.
This work will come at a crucial time for the implementation of Australia's MPA system.
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Impact of global stressors on the metabolic balance of the coastal Indian Ocean. The pelagic community metabolic balance characterises the role of ocean biota as a sink or source of carbon dioxide. No estimates of net community metabolism are available for the Indian Ocean, which is a major gap in our knowledge. Key environmental stressors, UVB radiation and warming (particularly heat wave events) have the potential to impact on pelagic community metabolism, especially along the Western Australi ....Impact of global stressors on the metabolic balance of the coastal Indian Ocean. The pelagic community metabolic balance characterises the role of ocean biota as a sink or source of carbon dioxide. No estimates of net community metabolism are available for the Indian Ocean, which is a major gap in our knowledge. Key environmental stressors, UVB radiation and warming (particularly heat wave events) have the potential to impact on pelagic community metabolism, especially along the Western Australian coast. This project addresses the lack of estimates of plankton metabolic balance in the coastal Indian Ocean and assess how multiple concurrent stressors can affect pelagic metabolism in the coastal Indian Ocean in a context of global change.Read moreRead less
The dynamics of sexual selection on gametes in a broadcast spawner. This project aims to develop integrated approaches for understanding sexual selection at the level of the gamete. It will use a new and highly versatile model system - the blue mussel - to seek insights into how multivariate selection targets ejaculates, the dynamic nature of selection, and the putative role that chemical communication between eggs and sperm plays in mediating these processes. A range of interdisciplinary approa ....The dynamics of sexual selection on gametes in a broadcast spawner. This project aims to develop integrated approaches for understanding sexual selection at the level of the gamete. It will use a new and highly versatile model system - the blue mussel - to seek insights into how multivariate selection targets ejaculates, the dynamic nature of selection, and the putative role that chemical communication between eggs and sperm plays in mediating these processes. A range of interdisciplinary approaches will be used to uncover these patterns, and the mechanisms underlying them. By focusing on a species exhibiting the ancestral reproductive strategy of broadcast spawning, the work will contribute to an understanding of major evolutionary transitions in reproductive biology.Read moreRead less