"By altering the environment, are humans tricking animals into making poor life choices?"
When good animals like bad habitats: ecological traps in the marine environment
Tag: ecosystem
FOR THE LOVE OF WETLANDS –MARINE ECOLOGIST HELPS PROTECT GLOBAL COASTAL ECOSYSTEMS
Author: PhD Alyssa Giffin Read Time: 872 words, about 6 minutes. Welcome to part one of the five-part Transition article series, the sequel to the Emergent series, that follows ARI’s Post-Doc Research Fellows as they navigate the next stage of their academic journey post-PhD. Take a journey with them and hear about some of the [...]
Deep Learning For Ecological Monitoring: Performance In Novel Habitats And Benefits Of varied Training Data
By PhD candidate Ellen Ditria, Reading Time: 452 words, about 2 minutes. Fish IDing Sample. Photo: Global Wetlands Project. Deep learning has fast become recognised as a powerful data processing tool for ecologists faced with vast amounts of image-based data. The ability of deep learning to accurately detect target species in videos and images unlocks [...]
Bring living waters back to our planet
Rivers, lakes, and wetlands support extraordinary diversity. Such bodies of water host more species per square kilometre than forests or oceans. Yet they are losing this biodiversity two to three times faster than forests and oceans. Populations of freshwater animals, including river dolphins, sturgeon, beavers, crocodiles, and giant turtles, have already plummeted by 88%.
The forgotten forests of the sea: Are they also threatened by climate change?
By PhD Candidates Carolina Olguin Jacobson and Nur Arafeh Dalmau (Guest Co-Author) Read Time: 449 words about 3 minutes. Extreme climatic events, such as marine heatwaves, are threatening one of the most productive (but often forgotten) marine ecosystems; kelp forests. Sea lions among kelp forest in a remote island Cedros, in Baja California, Mexico. Photo by: Nur Arafeh Dalmau. The importance of terrestrial forests is well known, but their marine counterpart, underwater kelp forests, are [...]
Fragmentation threatens mangrove forests but protection can help – in some areas
By Dr Mischa Turschwell Read Time: 342 words about 2 minutes. Mangrove forest conservation is increasingly attracting international interest. That’s because mangroves support incredible biodiversity, enhance fisheries, protect vulnerable coastal communities from storms, and reduce climate change by storing carbon. Lone Mangrove Sunset. Photo: Unknown. Unfortunately, mangrove forests remain one of the worlds most threatened ecosystems. Pressures from forest fragmentation, climate change, increasing exploitation [...]
The role of wetlands in improving water quality and protecting coastal ecosystems
By Melanie Roberts and Fernanda Adame Article Read Time: 524 words about 3 minutes. The 2019 Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report from the Australian Government Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority identifies the risk of nutrient runoff from catchments for the reef as Very High, the same rating as the 2014 and 2009 reports. --- This [...]
Global fragmentation of mangrove forests
By Dr Chris Brown Read Time: 354 words about 2 minutes. To inform conservation actions we need global indicators of wetland ecosystems that represent changes in ecosystem function. But current indicators are largely based on changes in the area of wetland ecosystems. In our new study we mapped fragmentation of mangrove habitats at a global scale. [...]
Director’s Welcome to ARI Magazine Edition 3
Australian Rivers Institute Director, Stuart Bunn. We welcome you back to another edition of the Australian RiversInstitute (ARI) Magazine. (Link). Over the past few months our staff have been active in strengthening research partnerships and establishing new connections across the globe. The importance of connections, not only with fellow researchers, industry and government but also [...]
Can trees control algal blooms – you’d be surprised
By Professor Michele Burford Reading Time: 537 words, about 3 minutes. Algal blooms are a major issue for water security globally and in Australia. We have seen the damage algal blooms have had on Murray-Darling Basin and the issues Florida have had with the recent 'red tide' epidemic. As our climate changes, we can expect [...]
Catchment to Coast 