First-order reversal curve diagrams & quantitative environmental magnetism. The project intends to enable full quantitative separation of magnetic mineral mixtures in natural materials to unlock details of important environmental processes. Most efforts to understand ancient variations of Earth’s magnetic field using palaeomagnetism, or climate change using environmental magnetism, are complicated by the presence of mixed assemblages of magnetic rock-forming minerals. Understanding the recording ....First-order reversal curve diagrams & quantitative environmental magnetism. The project intends to enable full quantitative separation of magnetic mineral mixtures in natural materials to unlock details of important environmental processes. Most efforts to understand ancient variations of Earth’s magnetic field using palaeomagnetism, or climate change using environmental magnetism, are complicated by the presence of mixed assemblages of magnetic rock-forming minerals. Understanding the recording of palaeomagnetic information or decoding environmental processes requires separate quantification of each mineral component. The main aim of the project is to develop a method to unmix the magnetic components present in environmental and geological materials. The proposed approach is expected to unlock a new quantitative era in rock magnetism, and to have impacts in physics as well as Earth science.Read moreRead less
Understanding interglacial diversity. This project intends to improve our understanding of interglacial processes. Interglacials, the relatively brief warm intervals of Quaternary ice-age cycles, have varied significantly over the last 800 000 years in terms of their duration, timing, intensity and complexity. The reason for such diversity has eluded palaeoclimatologists for decades. This is because of the difficulty of dating marine and ice records, which best preserve interglacial histories. T ....Understanding interglacial diversity. This project intends to improve our understanding of interglacial processes. Interglacials, the relatively brief warm intervals of Quaternary ice-age cycles, have varied significantly over the last 800 000 years in terms of their duration, timing, intensity and complexity. The reason for such diversity has eluded palaeoclimatologists for decades. This is because of the difficulty of dating marine and ice records, which best preserve interglacial histories. The projects plans to compile precisely dated time series of past interglacials that can be linked directly to these records, allowing robust comparisons between interglacial properties and changes in Earth's astronomical parameters. This would advance palaeoclimate theory and provide a new perspective on the future evolution of the climate system.Read moreRead less
A 140,000 year insight into the imprint of climate and humans on Australia. Before the arrival of Europeans, two events shaped Australia's current landscapes and biota more than any others: climate change during the glacial cycle and the arrival of humans on the continent. However, the full scale of these events is not well understood. High resolution analyses of two continuous 140 000 year old sediment deposits will be used in this project to fill this void and answer fundamental questions abou ....A 140,000 year insight into the imprint of climate and humans on Australia. Before the arrival of Europeans, two events shaped Australia's current landscapes and biota more than any others: climate change during the glacial cycle and the arrival of humans on the continent. However, the full scale of these events is not well understood. High resolution analyses of two continuous 140 000 year old sediment deposits will be used in this project to fill this void and answer fundamental questions about how current Australian environments came to be.Read moreRead less
When the ice melts: a new perspective on the causes of Quaternary glacial terminations. The project will assemble an unprecedented palaeoclimate time series extending back to 1.2 million years ago that will allow marine and ice core records to be placed onto an absolute time scale. This will allow testing of fundamental hypotheses on why the Earth's climate shifts from glacial to interglacial states, with flow-on effects to climate models.
Establishing baseline ecological conditions for the Lower Lakes, South Australia: the applications of palaeoecology to sustainable resource management. The Lower Lakes of the Murray River are in a critical ecological state due to record low water levels. Management of these lakes needs to integrate water security demands with maintaining healthy ecosystem functions. Proposed management options such as allowing seawater incursion and the construction of a weir to impede freshwater flows are based ....Establishing baseline ecological conditions for the Lower Lakes, South Australia: the applications of palaeoecology to sustainable resource management. The Lower Lakes of the Murray River are in a critical ecological state due to record low water levels. Management of these lakes needs to integrate water security demands with maintaining healthy ecosystem functions. Proposed management options such as allowing seawater incursion and the construction of a weir to impede freshwater flows are based on assumptions about what the Lakes were like naturally (pre-European). This study will reconstruct environmental variability within the Lower Lakes over the past 7000 years, concentrating on salinity to document the extent of marine incursion, and pH to examine the impacts of acid sulphate release from exposed sediments during low flow events. Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160100703
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$346,536.00
Summary
The Drumbeat of Human Evolution: Climate Proxies from Rockshelter Sediments. This project aims to trial new techniques for extracting environmental information from the sediments contained within archaeological rock shelters. Homo sapiens evolved during a period of dramatic climate variation, which almost certainly influenced human development and global dispersal. High-resolution climate records are rarely available for Pleistocene archaeological sites and so it is challenging to quantify the d ....The Drumbeat of Human Evolution: Climate Proxies from Rockshelter Sediments. This project aims to trial new techniques for extracting environmental information from the sediments contained within archaeological rock shelters. Homo sapiens evolved during a period of dramatic climate variation, which almost certainly influenced human development and global dispersal. High-resolution climate records are rarely available for Pleistocene archaeological sites and so it is challenging to quantify the degree of behavioural response to environmental change. This project aims to apply novel geophysical and geochemical techniques to provide new climate records for Indonesia and South Africa, facilitate correlation with other climate archives and thus create a means of directly evaluating the degree of environmental influence on human behavioural evolution.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE200100022
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$580,000.00
Summary
New frontier in Geoscience: A tandem trace element and isotopes facility. The project aims to integrate a multicollector mass spectrometer with the existing laser ablation laboratory at Southern Cross University to establish a unique facility offering tandem trace element and isotopes analysis. This will provide new methodological advancement by expanding the analytical range and obtaining information otherwise inaccessible to stand-alone instruments using traditional standardisation methods. Sp ....New frontier in Geoscience: A tandem trace element and isotopes facility. The project aims to integrate a multicollector mass spectrometer with the existing laser ablation laboratory at Southern Cross University to establish a unique facility offering tandem trace element and isotopes analysis. This will provide new methodological advancement by expanding the analytical range and obtaining information otherwise inaccessible to stand-alone instruments using traditional standardisation methods. Specifically, the integration of an innovative split stream system allows precise matching of elemental concentration with isotopic ratios, crucial for microscale resolution and data accuracy. The new infrastructure will confirm Australia’s leadership role and maintain its competitive advantage in geosciences.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE170100177
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$290,000.00
Summary
A regional optical dating facility in Australia. This project aims to establish an open access, end-user friendly optical dating facility in Australia. This will address shortcomings in the capacity and geographical coverage of the existing national geochronology infrastructure and enable Australian researchers to reconstruct past records of climate change, human evolution, ecological vulnerabilities, natural and man-made hazards and environmental disturbance over historical to near-million-year ....A regional optical dating facility in Australia. This project aims to establish an open access, end-user friendly optical dating facility in Australia. This will address shortcomings in the capacity and geographical coverage of the existing national geochronology infrastructure and enable Australian researchers to reconstruct past records of climate change, human evolution, ecological vulnerabilities, natural and man-made hazards and environmental disturbance over historical to near-million-year timeframes. This project is expected to increase commercial demand for geoscience services and lead to better understanding of Australia’s natural heritage and its long-term vulnerabilities.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160100743
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$388,496.00
Summary
Luminescence dating of Middle Pleistocene human histories in Europe. This project aims to ascertain the timing, context and nature of early human evolution and associated cultural turnovers in southern Europe using cutting-edge dating techniques. The project plans to use recent advances in extended-range luminescence dating to establish unequivocal, multifaceted chronologies for a comprehensive range of human fossil and stone tool sites from the Iberian Peninsula. The outcomes of this project ar ....Luminescence dating of Middle Pleistocene human histories in Europe. This project aims to ascertain the timing, context and nature of early human evolution and associated cultural turnovers in southern Europe using cutting-edge dating techniques. The project plans to use recent advances in extended-range luminescence dating to establish unequivocal, multifaceted chronologies for a comprehensive range of human fossil and stone tool sites from the Iberian Peninsula. The outcomes of this project are expected to advance our understanding of early human history by providing a critical temporal reappraisal of modelled hominin evolutionary relationships, determining the mode and tempo of cultural turnovers, and unravelling how past human populations responded to major climate change and environmental pressures.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120102530
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Are northern- and southern-hemisphere climates synchronised on orbital timescales? New insight into Earth's climate history. This project will generate a very high (1-100 year) resolution palaeoclimate record in order to test whether southern hemisphere ice age climate changes 1.5 million years ago were synchronised with the northern hemisphere. This will provide a critical test of theories on the mechanisms driving glacial- interglacial climate changes.