ARC Success CACHE Executive Member Dr Tim Ralph
CACHE congratulates our Executive Committee member, Dr Tim Ralph, and colleagues from the University of Wollongong on the successful award of a new ARC Linkage project "Are coastal wetlands vulnerable to bushfires?" The project will work towards ensuring resilience of coastal ecosystems impacted by bushfires and aiding their long-term management in a changing climate.
The research team includes Professor Kerrylee Rogers, Associate Professor Owen Price, and Dr Jeff Kelleway, who will partner with Dr Zacchary Larkin and Dr Michael Hughes (NSW Department of Planning and Environment), and Norm Lenehan and Shamaram Eichmann (NSW Department of Primary Industries).
This project aims to quantify the distribution and severity of fire impact and establish post-fire vegetation and surface elevation trajectories. Especially given the recent ‘Black Summer’ fires, that burned extensive areas of coastal wetland not typically associated with fire impact, this research will be integral to future fire management strategies. The team will research the extent these wetlands rely upon plant growth and sediment delivery to respond to sea-level rise, processes which may be impacted by fire. By integrating fire ecology and wetland science approaches, this project will ascertain the resilience of coastal wetlands to the cumulative impacts of fire and sea-level rise. The team expect the project to result in new, spatially-explicit fire management tools which will aid the sustainable, long-term management of coastal wetlands in a changing climate.
Congratulations to Dr Ralph and the team, CACHE looks forward to following their continued success.
Dr Timothy Ralph is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University. For more on Tim’s work, see his Macquarie University profile and engage with him on Twitter.
Top Right: Dr Tim Ralph in the Okavango Delta. (Photo by Kirstie Fryirs).