This seagrass habitat map was produced by the ACEAS Seagrass working group as part of the seagrass habitat risk modelling effort. The map identified seagrass presence based on 1) on the NISB (National Intertidal-Subtidal Benthic) Habitat Map created by the University of Tasmania for a partnership between the Department of Climate Change and the National Land and Water Resources Audit, 2) UNEP WCMC Seagrass map 2005, 3) publications/reports and 4) expert knowledge/personal observation.

This seagrass habitat map was produced by the ACEAS Seagrass working group as part of the seagrass habitat risk modelling effort. The map identified seagrass presence based on 1) on the NISB (National Intertidal-Subtidal Benthic) Habitat Map created by the University of Tasmania for a partnership between the Department of Climate Change and the National Land and Water Resources Audit, 2) UNEP WCMC Seagrass map 2005, 3) publications/reports

Radio technology has been used as a tool to gain insights into animal behaviour since the 1960s when it was first used to monitor animal locations using animal-mounted transmitters. Since then, ongoing miniaturisation accompanied by cost reduction has enabled new applications in this area, e.g. detecting large numbers of individually tagged insects in a few selected locations using RFID technology or tracking the location of a small number of tagged insects (typically less than 10)...

Plants exhibit numerous changes as they develop from a germinating seed through vegetative and reproductive stages to maturity. A seedling begins in a juvenile vegetative phase, and grows in size through the addition of new vegetative organs. As the plant acquires reproductive competence it enters an "adult" vegetative phase where flowering can occur in response to favourable environmental conditions. The initiation of reproductive structures signifies transition to the adult reproductive phase, in which gametes can...

Sea level rise has the potential to exacerbate coastal flooding around the world, causing more frequent extreme sea levels, nuisance flooding and permanent inundation. Projecting diverse physical, environmental and socio-economic impacts to coastal communities across multi-decadal timeframes is vital for informed adaptation planning. However, this is increasingly uncertain and challenged by conflicting stakeholder priorities. This thesis develops an interdisciplinary approach to advance the planning of long-term adaptation pathways in the context of coastal flood risk...

Operators and end users of Autonomous Marine Vehicles (AMVs) value mission reliability (i.e. the probability that the AMV satisfies mission goals). Operators traditionally use conservative safety margins when planning missions for AMVs to reduce the risk of uncertainty affecting mission success. Although pragmatic, the policy is largely based on user experience and runs the risk of underusing or overextending the vehicle in missions where experience is lacking. Quantifying components of uncertainty improves mission plans by...

A wave energy converter (WEC) has the potential to become a viable technology for clean, renewable energy production. This technology may prove invaluable to meet the growing demands for electrical power and the apparent changing climate conditions. WEC designs and power output rely heavily on the sea conditions and bathymetry surrounding their deployment sites and require extensive testing prior to the deployment of a commercially operating device. With the challenges and high costs of prototype...

The requirements for power quality in ship power systems have been increasing over the years. This is an essential consequence of improving the efficiency of the onboard power network and reduce emissions in the long term. The connection of sophisticated navigation and measuring instruments into the grid has also necessitated a higher quality of power to ensure optimal operating conditions for all the loads and avoid malfunction of equipment onboard a ship. The most significant...

Seabirds are widely used as an indicator species to track important changes in ecosystems. The key data required for monitoring include (i) population trends (ii) status, including demographic properties such as age structure and reproductive performance. Most seabirds have no outward or easily identifiable marks to age individuals and there are currently no robust molecular methods for age estimation in birds. Instead, individuals must be marked by leg rings as chicks to establish known-age populations,...

Introduced predators have had devastating impacts for native prey globally, contributing to high rates of species extinction and endangerment, particularly within island ecosystems. New Zealand is one of these island systems where native fauna, including a high diversity of endemic lizard species, are highly threatened. The heightened vulnerability of New Zealand’s fauna to introduced predators is often attributed to prey-naivety, which results from a lack of experience with mammalian predators over evolutionary time-scales. In addition...

Understanding the complex physics involved in compressible multi-phase flows has been a challenging topic in modern Computational Fluid Dynamics. This is particularly true when investigating the unsteady dynamics of flow in high pressure fuel injectors. The high pressure and impulsive nature of these flows lead to transient complex phenomena including flow separation, cavitation, interfacial instabilities and turbulence. These phenomena contribute to evolution of the spray atomisation in a nonlinear sense. Although useful information on injector...

As Australia’s population ages, the demand for housing in the private rental sector is expected to increase. Yet, private renting continues to be a problematic tenure that has proved difficult to regulate. Households subsisting on income support payments – Newstart Allowance, Age Pension and Disability Support Pension – are particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of the tenure. Empirical research has drawn attention to the fragile housing circumstances of women who are ageing in the private...

An unintended consequence of the global movement of humans and their domestic animals has, and continues to be, the introduction of pathogens to naïve host species. Such pathogen invasion events have consequences for wildlife ranging from benign to catastrophic. Yet, the specific impacts to affected species – from individuals to populations – and the capacity to mitigate these are often poorly understood. This is perhaps best illustrated in mammals by the parasitic mite, Sarcoptes scabiei...

How do school principals respond to the ethical dilemmas that arise in their schools? This is the guiding question for the research. Two specific questions guide the research design and inquiry. 1. What are the organisational characteristics of schools as systems? 2. How are principals’ approaches to ethical decision making informed by their perceptions of the organisational characteristics of their schools? The research methodology for Question 1 is a criteriological inquiry of literature into the...

Biodiversity is nature’s most valuable resource. The Southern Ocean contains significant levels of marine biodiversity as a result of its isolated history and a combination of exceptional environmental conditions. However, little is known about the spatial and temporal distribution of biodiversity on the Antarctic continental shelf, hindering informed marine spatial planning, policy development underpinning regulation of human activity, and predicting the response of Antarctic marine ecosystems to environmental change. In this thesis, I provide detailed...

This study seeks to show, for the first time, the aims of Australian composers in writing music for children’s performance. The results of quantitative and qualitative surveys with seventy-seven composers reveal the specialised skillsets required in writing for young musicians, as well as the reasons composers create music for this age group. Further, analyses of two scores for children’s performance by composers Don Kay and Dindy Vaughan yield deeper insights into the role a composer...

Water management is a critical global issue. Water security, environmental sustainability, water quality and economic development are all objectives of water management. These objectives will be placed under increasing pressure as climate change leads to shifts in weather patterns and regional climate, shifts in biome and increases in climate extremes and variability. Integrated water resource management is a management model that aims to balance social, economic and environmental needs at a catchment scale to achieve...

Microphytobenthos (MPB) is a community of unicellular microorganisms that inhabit the photic zone of intertidal and subtidal areas of benthic zones. MPB contributes up to half of the total coastal primary productivity, as well as providing a major food source for many invertebrates, small fish and wading birds. Additionally, MPB plays an important role in stabilising the sediment by producing extracellular carbohydrates that form biofilms, which bind sediment particles together. Intertidal zones experience extreme spatial...