Seagrass tolerance of oil spills - scaling of pollution impacts. Seagrasses provide vital ecosystem services (such as sediment stabilisation and habitat provision) in Australian coastal waters. The contribution of pollutants to current seagrass decline is poorly understood. The Australian shipping industry is the 5th largest in the world but there is very little data on the impacts of petroleum hydrocarbons on intertidal seagrasses and hence no information for coastal resource managers to use in ....Seagrass tolerance of oil spills - scaling of pollution impacts. Seagrasses provide vital ecosystem services (such as sediment stabilisation and habitat provision) in Australian coastal waters. The contribution of pollutants to current seagrass decline is poorly understood. The Australian shipping industry is the 5th largest in the world but there is very little data on the impacts of petroleum hydrocarbons on intertidal seagrasses and hence no information for coastal resource managers to use in decision-making in the event of an oil spill. This project will assess the relative toxicities of a number of petroleum hydrocarbons on Australian seagrass species to provide necessary data for the development of effective management practice.Read moreRead less
Toward a political ecology of risk in river basin development: The case of the Mekong. This project is designed to examine the distribution and redistribution of risk associated with environmental change and large scale development interventions in the Mekong Region. The research aims to make a theoretical contribution to the rapidly emerging field of political ecology, by moving beyond an analysis of winners and losers based on certainty and post-facto impacts. The study will work toward an ana ....Toward a political ecology of risk in river basin development: The case of the Mekong. This project is designed to examine the distribution and redistribution of risk associated with environmental change and large scale development interventions in the Mekong Region. The research aims to make a theoretical contribution to the rapidly emerging field of political ecology, by moving beyond an analysis of winners and losers based on certainty and post-facto impacts. The study will work toward an analysis driven by the inherent uncertainties that underlie both the social construction and social distribution of environmental risk. The research also has important practical implications for environmental and social assessment methodologies in and beyond the case study region.Read moreRead less
Endocrine Disrupting Compounds: Novel tests for Analysis and Field Validation. This project will give community benefits from new analytical technology and research data to help minimise the threat of environmental contamination with endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs). Both urban and rural communities may feel the impacts of EDCs, with potential contamination occurring globally, affecting both wildlife and humans. The main means of transport of EDCs is as contaminants in water and it is ess ....Endocrine Disrupting Compounds: Novel tests for Analysis and Field Validation. This project will give community benefits from new analytical technology and research data to help minimise the threat of environmental contamination with endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs). Both urban and rural communities may feel the impacts of EDCs, with potential contamination occurring globally, affecting both wildlife and humans. The main means of transport of EDCs is as contaminants in water and it is essential to learn the extent of contamination occurring in urban and rural water supplies to decide its significance. The research will involve a multi-disciplinary approach, with benefits falling into all four National Research Priorities of sustainability, good health, frontier analytical technology and national safety.Read moreRead less
Development of a novel Ecological Footprint for environmental reporting of companies. The aim of the project is to develop a novel Ecological Footprint concept to be applied at the company level to Sydney Water Corporation, an urban water services provider. The project will address major methodological limitations of the existing national EF concept by using regionalised input-output analysis. The outcome will be a sound, comprehensive, quantitative, reproducible, transparent and reliable EF met ....Development of a novel Ecological Footprint for environmental reporting of companies. The aim of the project is to develop a novel Ecological Footprint concept to be applied at the company level to Sydney Water Corporation, an urban water services provider. The project will address major methodological limitations of the existing national EF concept by using regionalised input-output analysis. The outcome will be a sound, comprehensive, quantitative, reproducible, transparent and reliable EF method. This new method will be an effective environmental reporting and communications tool for Sydney Water. Its value is greatly increased by the fact that it will be a generic approach to environmental reporting for any economic entity.Read moreRead less
Integration of Life Cycle Analysis, EnternE, and Economic Models to Sustainable Regional Development. This project involves the development of a novel decision-making framework to support the transition to sustainability within regions. The approach is based on integrating the methodologies of Life Cycle Analysis, externality costing and traditional economic analysis to assess the tradeoffs between economic, environmental and social outcomes. The integration of these techniques will allow the re ....Integration of Life Cycle Analysis, EnternE, and Economic Models to Sustainable Regional Development. This project involves the development of a novel decision-making framework to support the transition to sustainability within regions. The approach is based on integrating the methodologies of Life Cycle Analysis, externality costing and traditional economic analysis to assess the tradeoffs between economic, environmental and social outcomes. The integration of these techniques will allow the relative magnitude of positive and negative impacts of development decisions to be reported as an economic unit. This will allow the tradeoffs that occur between economic, environmental and social considerations to be quantified and the sustainability of a development or planning scenario to be assessed.Read moreRead less
Adaptation to carbon-tax-induced changes in energy demand in rural and regional Australia. The Clean Energy Bills will create a more sustainable environment but have a large impact on energy sectors. This project models the impact of the carbon tax and the responses of energy sectors.