Sport as a Communications Platform for Environmental Issues. This pioneering project aims to investigate the range of environmental and sustainability messages communicated by sport media, and how these messages negotiate the dilemma of promoting environmental awareness through events and activities that also generate adverse ecological impacts. By engaging sport media professionals, environmental claims-makers, policy-makers and journalists, this project seeks to deliver valuable knowledge that ....Sport as a Communications Platform for Environmental Issues. This pioneering project aims to investigate the range of environmental and sustainability messages communicated by sport media, and how these messages negotiate the dilemma of promoting environmental awareness through events and activities that also generate adverse ecological impacts. By engaging sport media professionals, environmental claims-makers, policy-makers and journalists, this project seeks to deliver valuable knowledge that informs industry decision-making, policy formulation and environmental awareness. The intended societal benefit is a new understanding of how environmental issues are communicated through popular media to large-scale publics, including how tensions in the communication of environmental change are negotiated.Read moreRead less
East Antarctica: subglacial heat flux constraints for ice sheet modelling. This project aims to quantify the heat flux from the East Antarctic continent into the base of the ice sheet via the derivation of a large geochemical database, together with elevation-based modelling and new heat flux measurements in regions formerly contiguous with East Antarctica. This subglacial heat flux is poorly constrained in current ice sheet models, but directly affects ice sheet behaviour. The output of this pr ....East Antarctica: subglacial heat flux constraints for ice sheet modelling. This project aims to quantify the heat flux from the East Antarctic continent into the base of the ice sheet via the derivation of a large geochemical database, together with elevation-based modelling and new heat flux measurements in regions formerly contiguous with East Antarctica. This subglacial heat flux is poorly constrained in current ice sheet models, but directly affects ice sheet behaviour. The output of this project will be a greatly improved heat flux map for East Antarctica that can be used in ice sheet modelling studies. This should drive significant improvement in models for the evolution of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in more accurate projections of ice discharge and associated sea level change.Read moreRead less
Seaweed forests of the future: responses to ocean acidification and warming. The aim is to discover if rising levels of oceanic carbon dioxide will offset negative effects of ocean warming on seaweeds, using targeted physiological experiments together with novel molecular diagnostics. Seaweeds create habitats and food for shellfish and fish, and play a crucial role in long term ‘blue carbon’ storage. They are predicted to benefit from future carbon dioxide enrichment, but to test this forecast r ....Seaweed forests of the future: responses to ocean acidification and warming. The aim is to discover if rising levels of oceanic carbon dioxide will offset negative effects of ocean warming on seaweeds, using targeted physiological experiments together with novel molecular diagnostics. Seaweeds create habitats and food for shellfish and fish, and play a crucial role in long term ‘blue carbon’ storage. They are predicted to benefit from future carbon dioxide enrichment, but to test this forecast requires a detailed understanding of the mechanisms used by seaweeds to acquire dissolved inorganic carbon. The expected outcome is robust predictions of how the primary productivity of coastal waters will respond to future high carbon dioxide conditions, enabling human adaptation to environmental change.
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Multi-Country Study on Health Effects of Bushfire Air Pollution. Catastrophic bushfires are a major natural disaster, causing serious air pollution. However, aligning bushfire air pollution and public health policies becomes a significant challenge, because limited studies are available on relationships between bushfire air pollution and human health, particularly for the prolonged exposure. We will characterize the nature of the relationships between bushfire air pollution and mortality/morbidi ....Multi-Country Study on Health Effects of Bushfire Air Pollution. Catastrophic bushfires are a major natural disaster, causing serious air pollution. However, aligning bushfire air pollution and public health policies becomes a significant challenge, because limited studies are available on relationships between bushfire air pollution and human health, particularly for the prolonged exposure. We will characterize the nature of the relationships between bushfire air pollution and mortality/morbidity by developing a multi-country study; and estimate the burden of diseases attributed to bushfire air pollution. This project will provide essential scientific evidence to policy-makers and stakeholders in the development, prioritization and implementation of health protection strategies and policies.
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Towards an Active and Passive L- and P-band soil moisture satellite mission. This project tests alternate configurations for remote sensing of soil moisture using a new state-of-the-art Active/Passive (ie radar/radiometer) P-/L-band (ie microwave) satellite concept through a series of airborne field experiments. Timely soil moisture information is critical to improved water management for food production in the face of climate variability. The challenge is to do this accurately over large areas ....Towards an Active and Passive L- and P-band soil moisture satellite mission. This project tests alternate configurations for remote sensing of soil moisture using a new state-of-the-art Active/Passive (ie radar/radiometer) P-/L-band (ie microwave) satellite concept through a series of airborne field experiments. Timely soil moisture information is critical to improved water management for food production in the face of climate variability. The challenge is to do this accurately over large areas with an appropriate spatio-temporal detail, and for a soil depth that closely approximates the layer which impacts crop/pasture growth and influences management decisions. The longer P-band allows deeper penetration into the soil while the active/passive combination uses the respective resolution and accuracy characteristics.Read moreRead less
Southern Ocean Sea Ice – what happened and what happens next? This project will adress our lack of confidence in future projections of sea ice around Antarctica by elucidating the mechanisms controlling sea ice in the Southern Ocean.
There is low confidence is current sea ice projections, limiting our ability to predict ice shelf melt and sea level rise.
This project will lead to a detailed understanding of the future of sea ice in the Southern Ocean, improving our understanding of ocean dynam ....Southern Ocean Sea Ice – what happened and what happens next? This project will adress our lack of confidence in future projections of sea ice around Antarctica by elucidating the mechanisms controlling sea ice in the Southern Ocean.
There is low confidence is current sea ice projections, limiting our ability to predict ice shelf melt and sea level rise.
This project will lead to a detailed understanding of the future of sea ice in the Southern Ocean, improving our understanding of ocean dynamics, ice shelf melt, and sea level rise.
The results from this project will enhance projections of sea ice, and therefore also ice shelf melt and sea level rise. Improved sea level projections will aid policy decisions for coastal communities.Read moreRead less
Enabling social innovation for local climate adaptability. Climate variability and change is likely to be felt most acutely at the local scale in Australia. This is where inter/national and State policies are translated into practices to prepare for, and adapt to, anticipated impacts of heatwaves, bushfires and floods. This project will investigate tensions and potentialities between risk-based assessments by local governance agencies and innovations by local groups and Non-Government Organisati ....Enabling social innovation for local climate adaptability. Climate variability and change is likely to be felt most acutely at the local scale in Australia. This is where inter/national and State policies are translated into practices to prepare for, and adapt to, anticipated impacts of heatwaves, bushfires and floods. This project will investigate tensions and potentialities between risk-based assessments by local governance agencies and innovations by local groups and Non-Government Organisations. The research will utilise an innovative mixed-methods approach to investigate and to analyse the strategies and experiments of adaptation practices. It aims to develop new ways of identifying and implementing practical, local, adaptive responses that are contextually relevant, socially innovative and capacity building.Read moreRead less
Defining winning strategies in a changing Southern Ocean . The ecosystem of the Southern Ocean is extremely complex, and understanding its response to rapid climate change is challenging. The aim of the project is to use changes in the behaviour of marine predators to provide new measures of integrated changes in eastern Antarctic ecosystems throughout the winter. With novel combinations of electronic tagging, natural biogeochemical markers, and simulation modelling, the project expects to recon ....Defining winning strategies in a changing Southern Ocean . The ecosystem of the Southern Ocean is extremely complex, and understanding its response to rapid climate change is challenging. The aim of the project is to use changes in the behaviour of marine predators to provide new measures of integrated changes in eastern Antarctic ecosystems throughout the winter. With novel combinations of electronic tagging, natural biogeochemical markers, and simulation modelling, the project expects to reconstruct changes in animal behaviour in response to changes in the environment. The data is anticipated to explain ongoing large-scale shifts in Southern Ocean ecosystems, providing information needed to underpin future management and adaptation strategies.Read moreRead less