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Acid oceans and a symphony
The oceans around East Antarctica are becoming acidic at a faster rate than expected, and could become toxic to some forms of marine life in the next 15 years.
Turning groundwater into wine
An investigation into groundwater underneath South Australia’s McLaren Vale wine region will help to ensure the local hydrologic cycle and world-famous wines keep flowing freely, and contribute to better groundwater management across Australia. About a third of Australia’s water comes from underground sources.
Elephant seals discover bottom water
Japanese and Australian researchers deployed elephant seals to solve a Southern Ocean mystery in 2013.
How flies can help us predict the future
Dr Vanessa Kellermann, evolutionary biologist, Monash University, Melbourne
Vanessa Kellermann is working with native fruit fly species from Tasmania to tropical Queensland to find out. She has already demonstrated that tropical flies are more vulnerable to change in the long term. They don’t have the genetic capacity to evolve quickly. Now, with her L’Oréal For Women in Science Fellowship, she will explore how flexible they are in the short term—how individual insects can respond to change during their lifetimes.
“No one sets out to study flies,” she says. But they are perfect for asking basic questions that will allow us to create models of evolution and help people—from farmers to health professionals—plan for change.
When Dr Vanessa Kellermann tells people she studies flies, there’s an almost automatic assumption that she’s working to get rid of them. In fact, it’s quite the reverse. Vanessa would consider her research a success if her flies hung around for many more millions of years, along with most of the other plants and animals on Earth.
Motor races and science labs fuel interest in science
Each year in early July, when its 700 students are on holiday, Townsville State High School becomes the headquarters for a V8 Supercars race.
But before and after the race, Sarah Chapman’s Year 11 science students are hard at work, slopping their way through the nearby mangroves and wading into the neighbouring estuary. The data they collect is then used by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to manage the impact of the race on local estuaries. “The students are really taken by the idea that they are finding out things nobody else knows,” Sarah says.
Continue reading Motor races and science labs fuel interest in science
Inspiring Australia
Over the past three years Australia has established and advanced a unique national engagement model—working with governments at all levels, with science sector agencies and organisations, as well as industry.
Citizen science: eyes in the skies and on the seas
Australian citizen scientists are helping to catch shooting stars in the vast skies of outback Australia and to track the impact of climate change on species in our warming oceans.
Curtin University’s Fireballs in the Sky project invites people to use a smartphone app to record and submit the time, location, trajectory and appearance of meteors they spot.
By triangulating these reports with observations from an array of cameras in remote Western and South Australia, scientists can try to determine where the meteorite may have come from and where it landed.
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Land clearing harms Reef water quality
Coastal land clearing has led to poor water quality in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon and threats to reef animals, according to the first data providing evidence of the damage.
The Water Quality and Ecosystem Health research team at the Australian Institute of Marine Science has collected 20 years of data, which shows the connection between high rates of land clearing and reduced reef water quality in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“Our analyses show that water quality in the lagoon dropped significantly during the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period that coincided with very high rates of vegetation clearing on land adjacent to rivers,” says research team leader, Britta Schaffelke.
No place like home as reef critters face extinction
Coral reef organisms that help build homes for thousands of other species face extinction by 2100, thanks to increased CO2 levels and ocean acidification.
Researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science have discovered that ocean acidification around naturally occurring CO2 seeps in Papua New Guinea offer a glimpse of a future high-CO2 world and its impact on coral reef ecosystems, including the possible complete loss of creatures called Foraminifera, or forams.
Continue reading No place like home as reef critters face extinction