Current Research Projects
Alongside our applied work in river health assessment. Research on the impact of humans, climate change & extreme events assists us in understanding how river health assessment will need to change in the future to ensure we are producing quality results & outcomes.
Research involves constant investigating & redesigning of the scientific questions posed. The strength of my research lies in the breadth & depth of the experimental & statistical approaches I utilize in understanding the mechanisms that drive the aquatic systems being studied. Learn more about our ongoing research projects below.
Climate Change Impact on stream invertebrates
Building on therammal tolerance limits and methods used to examine freshwater shrimp. This research seeks to find the upper thermal limits of a dozen Australian macroinvertebrate species. This data is esential in the understand of how climate change impacts our rivers and river healh assessment.
Thermal adaption potential of Paratya australiensis
This study aims to examine the acclimatisation ability and plasticity of thermal limits of Paratya australiensis Kemp, 1917 (Decapoda, Atyidae) in subtropical headwater streams. This was achieved through three main objectives. The first was to determine the Upper Lethal Temperature (ULT) of winter acclimatised P. australiensis based on winter stream temperature. The second was to determine the ULT based on warm-water laboratory acclimation temperature, Finally the ULT of the two treatments were compared to expose any impacts of acclimatisation temperature. Examining the acclimatised specimens' responses can help understand the adaptive capacity of P. australiensis to future warming.
Effect of thermal spike associatted with extreme bushfire on stream invertebrates
The aim of this paper is to examine the impact to instream invertebrate communities to stream temperature spike associated with the increasing occurrence of high-severity wild fire.
