Blog

Blue carbon ecosystems, such as mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrasses, play critical roles in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Victoria is home to vast areas of these natural climate solutions, where large-scale research has uncovered their importance and the many ecosystem services they provide. On a local scale, it is increasingly important to understand the opportunitiesRead more

A new study has, for the first time, put a value on the contribution of coastal ecosystems to the diet of fish, estimating it is worth $80 million a year to Australian fisheries. The study by researchers at Deakin University’s Centre for Integrative Ecology in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences looked at seagrass,Read more

World experts set the agenda for coastal microbiome research with an international study highlighting the top seven themes where further research is urgently needed. Lead author of the study, Dr Stacey Trevathan-Tackett from Deakin University’s Blue Carbon Lab said microbes are indispensable to life on earth, but are often understudied and overlooked by their size.Read more

Deakin University’s Blue Carbon Lab has set the agenda for future research into blue carbon with an international study that poses the top 10 questions for the emerging area of marine science. The questions have been developed by the world’s leading blue carbon researchers and are contained in a new paper that highlights areas whereRead more

  Disturbing ancient carbon stores buried deep in coastal ecosystems can trigger the release of destructive greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, new research from Deakin’s leading blue carbon scientists has found. The findings show coastal ecosystems, which are more effective than trees at capturing carbon, are more fragile than researchers previously thought, and could inRead more

New Deakin and University of Melbourne research has put a spotlight on the health of Port Phillip Bay, showing the effects of the millennium drought has almost wiped out kelp forests in the bay’s north. Lead author Dr Paul Carnell, an associate research fellow in Deakin’s Blue Carbon Lab, said the drought’s decline in rainfallRead more

NEWSWEEKDec 12, 2018 | By Hannah Osborne The Great Barrier Reef has a meadow of deep-water seagrass that acts as a huge blue carbon sink, scientists have discovered. The seagrass, which covers an area twice the size of New Jersey, stores almost 28 million tonnes of organic carbon—and could be helping to ward off climateRead more

A Deakin study quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions from farm dams for the first time has shown they are a significant contributor to manmade climate change, but that emissions could be cut in half with targeted changes to farming practices. The study, published today in the journal Global Change Biology, sampled agricultural dams from regionalRead more

 A survey of international environmental experts suggests that attitudes to the decommissioning of offshore infrastructure, such as oil platforms, have shifted. Almost 95% of the experts, drawn from 10 nations across academia, government and industry, believe that a more flexible, case-by-case, approach to equipment removal would be better for the environment. Obsolete offshore infrastructure, includingRead more

Victoria’s inland wetlands lock away the annual emissions of 185,000 people, or roughly the population of Geelong, according to the state’s first ever tally of the valuable environmental resources. The tally, which came to three million tons of CO2 each year, was gathered by researchers from the Deakin School of Life and Environmental Sciences’ BlueRead more