Reconstructing Australia’s fire history from cave stalagmites. Fire represents a major natural hazard, and its impact on Australian communities and ecosystems is increasing. Representing a world first, this project aims to calibrate the paleofire signal from stalagmites in shallow caves, and to construct annually resolved stalagmite records of paleofire frequency and intensity for the last millennia. The project aims to use stalagmites from south west Australia to determine the relationship betw ....Reconstructing Australia’s fire history from cave stalagmites. Fire represents a major natural hazard, and its impact on Australian communities and ecosystems is increasing. Representing a world first, this project aims to calibrate the paleofire signal from stalagmites in shallow caves, and to construct annually resolved stalagmite records of paleofire frequency and intensity for the last millennia. The project aims to use stalagmites from south west Australia to determine the relationship between fire and climate and assess the robustness of stalagmite hydroclimate proxies in fire-prone regions. This project expects to establish a new research field for speleothem science, enhancing capacity for the Australian Quaternary and speleothem research communities, as well as benefits to land managers.Read moreRead less
The last glaciation maximum climate conundrum and environmental responses of the Australian continent to altered climate states. This project will show how climate systems in south east Australia responded to large scale global change the last time this happened, which was about 21,000 years ago. By determining the climate response in Australia to this change, this project will help predict future response in rainfall and temperature to human-induced and natural climate change.
Global climate change and coastal landscape evolution in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct environmental changes that occurred in southern Australia during a geologically recent time interval termed the Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.2 million to 700 thousand years ago) and an interglacial period some 400,000 years ago. Using innovative geochronological, geochemical and modelling techniques, the environmental changes that shaped modern Australian coastal landscapes, in ....Global climate change and coastal landscape evolution in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct environmental changes that occurred in southern Australia during a geologically recent time interval termed the Early-Middle Pleistocene Transition (1.2 million to 700 thousand years ago) and an interglacial period some 400,000 years ago. Using innovative geochronological, geochemical and modelling techniques, the environmental changes that shaped modern Australian coastal landscapes, including the intensification of aridity and their timing will be examined. The project will yield new knowledge about the sensitivity of landscapes to current and ongoing environmental changes and derive explanatory models of the rates and characteristics of landscape response to assist future coastal environmental management.Read moreRead less
Quantitative reconstructions of Australian climates since the last Interglacial. A crucial test of the models used to project future climate is how well they reproduce past climates. The project will reconstruct Australian regional climates, from vegetation, fire and runoff records, and use these for climate-model evaluation - helping to provide a more solid basis for management of Australian resources in the future.
Equator to Pole: Reconstructing tropical and Antarctic climate variability over the last millennium and their impacts on southern Australian rainfall. Water resource management is one of the greatest challenges facing sustainable agriculture and urban populations across southern Australia. Key players driving catastrophic droughts in southern Australia are the tropical Indian Ocean Dipole and polar Southern Annual Mode climate systems, which affect moisture availability and transport pathways. T ....Equator to Pole: Reconstructing tropical and Antarctic climate variability over the last millennium and their impacts on southern Australian rainfall. Water resource management is one of the greatest challenges facing sustainable agriculture and urban populations across southern Australia. Key players driving catastrophic droughts in southern Australia are the tropical Indian Ocean Dipole and polar Southern Annual Mode climate systems, which affect moisture availability and transport pathways. This collaborative research project draws together a uniquely-skilled research team to develop targeted coral, ice and cave reconstructions of these climate systems and their impacts on Australian rainfall through the last millennium. This fundamental new knowledge of the drivers of Australian rainfall variability will aid improved predictability of future changes in our valuable water resources. Read moreRead less
Reconstructing changes in atmospheric circulation over the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere during the past 3000 years. The climate of the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere is of global significance and yet past changes have proved difficult to reconstruct due to the dearth of records. Working across the Southern Ocean region using tree rings, lake sediments and ice cores, the project will produce the first comprehensive reconstruction spanning the last 3000 years.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120103033
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
The wet and dry of tropical Australia: past, present and future. This project investigates rivers in the tropical 'Top End' of Australia and how flooding and long-term flow have changed over the recent geologic past. Such knowledge adds important components to our understanding of past climate in Australia, and is crucial in assessing the impacts of future global change on the continent's water resources.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200100907
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$426,715.00
Summary
Investigating the synchroneity of global atmospheric shifts in the Holocene. The austral mid-latitude westerly winds dominate Southern Hemisphere climate variability today (including the Australasian region) and are tightly coupled to the Southern Ocean, modulating the air-sea CO2 flux. However, short instrumental records in the south make future climate projections uncertain. This Project will develop the first highly-detailed reconstructions of westerly airflow from targeted Southern Ocean isl ....Investigating the synchroneity of global atmospheric shifts in the Holocene. The austral mid-latitude westerly winds dominate Southern Hemisphere climate variability today (including the Australasian region) and are tightly coupled to the Southern Ocean, modulating the air-sea CO2 flux. However, short instrumental records in the south make future climate projections uncertain. This Project will develop the first highly-detailed reconstructions of westerly airflow from targeted Southern Ocean islands during key periods of change, representing a range of climate states over the Holocene (the last 11,650 yrs). Intensive radiocarbon dating will allow precise alignment to a network of palaeoclimate records to test the timing, drivers and impacts of circulation change across Australia and globally.Read moreRead less
Sedimentary processes on sandy coasts in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct sedimentary processes and evolution of key coastal plains in southern Australia. These low-lying coasts, and the settlements and infrastructure on them, are vulnerable to inundation and shoreline erosion. Past behaviour of different types of coasts will be determined by combining innovative geospatial techniques to map morphology and past changes, geophysical imaging of stratigraphy and geochronology. T ....Sedimentary processes on sandy coasts in southern Australia. This project aims to reconstruct sedimentary processes and evolution of key coastal plains in southern Australia. These low-lying coasts, and the settlements and infrastructure on them, are vulnerable to inundation and shoreline erosion. Past behaviour of different types of coasts will be determined by combining innovative geospatial techniques to map morphology and past changes, geophysical imaging of stratigraphy and geochronology. The outcome will be models that explain responses to sediment availability, past storm history and sea-level changes. This will benefit sustainable coastal planning and management, providing geomorphological evidence to support erosion hazard assessments of these and adjacent coasts.Read moreRead less
The Southern Ocean's response to abrupt climate change. This project aims to determine how the Southern Ocean responds to abrupt climate change, through geochemical analysis of marine sediment cores. Rapid warming events of the last ice age provide an analogue to human-caused warming. Experiments using ocean climate models will evaluate the drivers and consequences of the biogeochemical response of different sectors and zones of the Southern Ocean. The intended outcome is a better understanding ....The Southern Ocean's response to abrupt climate change. This project aims to determine how the Southern Ocean responds to abrupt climate change, through geochemical analysis of marine sediment cores. Rapid warming events of the last ice age provide an analogue to human-caused warming. Experiments using ocean climate models will evaluate the drivers and consequences of the biogeochemical response of different sectors and zones of the Southern Ocean. The intended outcome is a better understanding of how and why climate change impacts ocean productivity in the ecologically significant Southern Ocean. This will lead to better representations of carbon feedbacks in climate models and more robust projections of future climate change.Read moreRead less