Diagnosing river health using invertebrate traits and DNA barcodes. Diagnosing river health using invertebrate traits and DNA barcodes. This project aims to develop indices that link change in invertebrate communities to specific environmental stressors, and combine these indices with innovative, low cost molecular approaches to species identification to rapidly identify the causes of decline. River health assessment methods, usually based on aquatic invertebrates, identify if rivers are impaire ....Diagnosing river health using invertebrate traits and DNA barcodes. Diagnosing river health using invertebrate traits and DNA barcodes. This project aims to develop indices that link change in invertebrate communities to specific environmental stressors, and combine these indices with innovative, low cost molecular approaches to species identification to rapidly identify the causes of decline. River health assessment methods, usually based on aquatic invertebrates, identify if rivers are impaired but must be developed to identify the causes of decline. The intended outcomes are improved sustainable water resource management within and among states, and improved natural resource policy development.Read moreRead less
Investigating movement, distribution, abundance and diet to support management objectives for threatened riverine predators in Northern Australia. The rivers and estuaries of northern Australia are highly productive environments, containing an exceptional diversity and abundance of large predatory aquatic species. This project aims to monitor the movements, habitat preferences and diet in eight large predatory species in a northern Queensland river over the next three years. Movement data will b ....Investigating movement, distribution, abundance and diet to support management objectives for threatened riverine predators in Northern Australia. The rivers and estuaries of northern Australia are highly productive environments, containing an exceptional diversity and abundance of large predatory aquatic species. This project aims to monitor the movements, habitat preferences and diet in eight large predatory species in a northern Queensland river over the next three years. Movement data will be combined with isotopic analysis to reveal how environmental and biological factors drive animal movements and impact habitat connectivity. In a world of vanishing top predators, it is imperative to understand system dynamics before we can evaluate the impact of species removal on ecosystem function.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE140100088
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$150,000.00
Summary
A coupled high temperature elemental analyser - gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer for climate, water and ecological research. A coupled high temperature elemental analyser - gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer for climate, water and ecological research: This project is for a high temperature, elemental analysis, gas chromatography, isotope mass spectrometry facility. This would permit the analysis of the isotopes of up to four elements in a range of environmental samples such as tree cell ....A coupled high temperature elemental analyser - gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer for climate, water and ecological research. A coupled high temperature elemental analyser - gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer for climate, water and ecological research: This project is for a high temperature, elemental analysis, gas chromatography, isotope mass spectrometry facility. This would permit the analysis of the isotopes of up to four elements in a range of environmental samples such as tree cellulose, ecological samples and dissolved nutrients in surface and ground waters. Results will help improve our understanding of climate - surface water - ground water interactions, ecosystem function, and past climate and environmental change. The new facility will meet the need for organic isotope analyses to better understand the underlying physical processes.Read moreRead less
Systematic planning beyond conservation: a multi-objective, multi action framework for sustainable biodiversity. When planning for conservation in rivers, protecting plants and animals can not simply be achieved by protecting parts of a river. This project will develop a strategy to sustain freshwater biodiversity that will optimally allocate conservation and restoration resources and minimises negative socioeconomic impacts on stakeholders.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE170100219
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$170,000.00
Summary
A multi-institutional environmental radioactivity research centre. This project aims to establish an environmental radioactivity research centre, equipped with ultra-low background and high-resolution alpha and gamma spectrometry systems, radon detectors and radium delayed coincidence counters. The centre will address a critical demand in Australia for precise analysis of a large suite of natural and artificial radionuclides, which will be used as tracers and chronological tools to investigate k ....A multi-institutional environmental radioactivity research centre. This project aims to establish an environmental radioactivity research centre, equipped with ultra-low background and high-resolution alpha and gamma spectrometry systems, radon detectors and radium delayed coincidence counters. The centre will address a critical demand in Australia for precise analysis of a large suite of natural and artificial radionuclides, which will be used as tracers and chronological tools to investigate key questions in oceanography and the mining and energy, archaeological, agricultural, and forestry sectors. The facility is expected to substantially increase expertise and training in radionuclides in Australia, and promote high-level research collaborations and outputs of both national and international significance. Major outcomes of the proposed facility include better understanding of how oceans regulate climate and improved capacity to assess effects of radiation on natural ecosystems.Read moreRead less
From environmental monitoring to management: extracting knowledge about environmental events from sensor data. New, high-detail sources of environmental sensor data are useless without new methods for identifying patterns and extracting knowledge from that data. This project will develop improved techniques for interacting with environmental sensor data to assist environmental scientists and manager in understand the important events that are occurring.
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE130100121
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$670,000.00
Summary
A facility for the nanoscale imaging and characterisation of materials. Nanotechnology is dependent on measuring surface properties and this cutting-edge scanning probe microscopy facility will provide this capability. Atomic resolution imaging, along with spectroscopy for chemical information, and nanoindentation for physical information, will generate solutions for physical and life sciences, and materials engineering.
Solve it or Ignore it? The Challenge of Alignment Distortion and Creating Next Generation Automatic Facial Expression Detection. The last two decades have seen an escalating interest in automating the coding of facial expressions. Despite this keen interest, the promise of computer vision systems to accurately code facial expressions in natural circumstances remains elusive. Our interdisciplinary team will research a new paradigm to account for facial alignment distortion directly rather than ai ....Solve it or Ignore it? The Challenge of Alignment Distortion and Creating Next Generation Automatic Facial Expression Detection. The last two decades have seen an escalating interest in automating the coding of facial expressions. Despite this keen interest, the promise of computer vision systems to accurately code facial expressions in natural circumstances remains elusive. Our interdisciplinary team will research a new paradigm to account for facial alignment distortion directly rather than aiming to achieve invariance to it. The project will also research new data agnostic feature compaction capabilities to enable scalable learning on the world’s largest and challenging expression dataset available to us through international collaboration. Tackling these two major open problems will make accurate coding of facial expressions in natural environments achievable.Read moreRead less
Evolved enzymes and biomimetics for organophosphate degradation. Organophosphate (OP) pesticides are an indispensable part of modern agriculture - their use results in dramatically increased crop yields. However, they are toxic and can damage the environment and cause significant health problems. This project intends to evolve enzymes capable of dealing with problems caused by OPs.
ARC Research Network on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing. Sensor networks, a collection of diverse sensors interconnected via an ad-hoc communication network, are identified as one of the key technologies that over the next two decades will change the way we live. This research network brings together an interdisciplinary team of outstanding Australian researchers representing all the key disciplines required to successfully deploy sensor networks and links this te ....ARC Research Network on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing. Sensor networks, a collection of diverse sensors interconnected via an ad-hoc communication network, are identified as one of the key technologies that over the next two decades will change the way we live. This research network brings together an interdisciplinary team of outstanding Australian researchers representing all the key disciplines required to successfully deploy sensor networks and links this team with the foremost international authorities and leading industry players in the area of sensor networks. This research network will guide collaborative research that will ensure Australia to play a world leading role in sensor network development and implementation.
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