CACHE Executive Committee Member ARC DP Success: Dr Tim Ralph
CACHE congratulates our Executive Committee member, Dr Tim Ralph, and colleagues on the successful award of an ARC Discovery Project (2022-2025), titled “Will rivers be smaller when the climate is hotter?” which aims to quantify past and project future responses of inland rivers to global temperature change.
The Discovery Project team is led by Associate Professor Paul Hesse (MQ) and includes Professor Kirstie Fryirs (MQ), Dr Timothy Ralph (MQ), Associate Professor Anthony Kiem (UoN), Associate Professor Andrea Taschetto (UNSW), and Dr Alfonsina Tripaldi and Dr Adriana Mehl (Argentina National Scientific and Technical Research Council, CONICET).
The “Will rivers be smaller when the climate is hotter?” project aims to investigate how large rivers are affected by changing atmospheric temperature. The project will quantify the size and age of abandoned river channels in the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia and the Atuel/Diamante basin of Argentina. The data will be used to reconstruct a history of changes in river discharge and relate this to long-term climate change, followed by novel climate and hydrological modelling to simulate the impact of temperature changes on future catchment runoff and river discharge. Considering large inland rivers are the main source of water supporting ecological functions, economies and societies in Australia, Argentina and many other continents, this research is vital for decision-making, planning and water resource allocation.
Dr Ralph, as an expert in the geomorphology of rivers and wetlands in dry landscapes, will be an excellent asset to this interdisciplinary team. Tim has extensive research experience in the Murray-Darling Basin and around the world, where he seeks to understand patterns and processes of fluvial landform change, sediment dynamics, aquatic ecosystem function, and interactions between people and rivers/wetlands in the context of long-term landscape evolution and environmental change.
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).
Middle: Aerial image of the lower Lachlan River and its wetlands in the Murray–Darling Basin. (Photo by Tim Ralph).
Bottom: Professor Kirstie Fryirs and Dr Peyton Lisenby collecting sediment core samples near the Mulwaree River. (Photo by Tim Ralph).