ARI Newsletter - June 2012

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In this issue: Catalyst investigates coastal flood impacts + Understanding the sources of sediment in SEQ + Professor David Lambert honoured among Griffith's top researchers + ARI academic has right chemistry for Her Majesty + Environmentally friendly pollutants – what your detergent does to waterways + Recent publications + Message from the Director Welcome to the latest edition of the Australian Rivers Institute newsletter.  This month, the distinguished research careers of two of our senior ARI colleagues were formally recognised.  Emeritus Professor Des Connell was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2012 Queen's Honours List for his outstanding contribution to environmental chemistry, university education, and environmental risk assessments.  Professor Dave Lambert received the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award for an individual senior researcher.  I congratulate you both on behalf of all staff and students in ARI. The environmental costs of the drought-breaking floods of 2011 and 2012 continue to attract media attention.  The impacts of sediment and nutrients from catchment erosion on coastal ecosystems were recently aired on Catalyst (April 19) with interviews with Professor Rod Connolly and ARI students.  Professor Jon Olley’s group has continued to work closely with regional partners to identify where the sediment came from and what caused it. Not only is ARI’s research focused on understanding the sources and fate of these major pollutants but, importantly, what can be done to address them.  In the case of South-east Queensland, the causes are understood – as are the solutions.  These have been well studied over the last decade and this knowledge informs the business case under consideration by government on “The Future of Our Bay”.  Aside from the significant financial investment required to tackle diffuse pollution at the scale required, there is a need to invest in training and capacity building. This is required to dispel some of the popular myths about riparian vegetation and flooding, and provide the necessary skills in catchment processes, river behaviour, and riparian and channel restoration for planners, resource managers and others tasked with making our catchments more resilient to future extreme events.  This is an area where ARI can make a difference and we are keen to work with our regional partners to address these core skills needs. Professor Stuart Bunn Director, Australian Rivers Institute June 25, 2012 Back to top _ Latest News Catalyst investigates coastal flood impacts The ABC's Catalyst program investigated the impacts of South-East Queensland's 2011 floods on Moreton Bay in the story Coastal Flood Impact, which aired on ABC1 on Thursday 19 April 2012. The Australian Rivers Institute's Professor Rod Connolly featured in the program, along with PhD students Paul Maxwell and Andrew Olds, to discuss the impacts of the floods on the corals, seagrass and dugongs of Moreton Bay. >Read More Understanding the sources of sediment in SEQ Ongoing studies into the sources of sediment in South-east Queensland, partnered with Seqwater and the then Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM), now Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts, continue to show the dominance of channel erosion in supplying sediment to the regions waterways. >Read More Professor David Lambert honoured among Griffith's top researchers The Australian Rivers Institute's Professor David Lambert was presented with the Award for excellence of an individual mid-career researcher at the 2012 Vice Chancellor's Excellence Awards. Professor Lambert’s work has spanned 25 years and focuses on the nature of evolution and the biological processes that underpin it. He is a highly published and highly cited researcher with an international reputation. >Read More ARI academic has right chemistry for Her Majesty Emeritus Professor Des Connell of the Griffith School of Environment and member of the Australian Rivers Institute has been honoured with the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2012 Queen's Honours List. Professor Connell was recognised for his outstanding contribution to environmental chemistry, university education, and environmental risk assessments across Australia and beyond. >Read More Environmentally friendly pollutants – what your detergent does to waterways After the big wet, spare a thought for the health of your waterways and the substances that wash into them. Bacteria are important to the health of the waterways running through our backyards. As decomposers – organisms that break down substances – they are an essential part of a natural healthy ecosystem. These bacteria live on the substances that wash into the waterway. >Read More Back to top _ Recent Publications Anderson, K.,  King, H.,  Pankhurst, N.,  Ruff, N.,  Pankhurst, P., Elizur, A. (2012) Effect of elevated temperature on estrogenic induction of vitellogenesis and zonagenesis in juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Marine and Freshwater Behaviour and Physiology 334: 205-212.   Ashelby, C.W., Page, T.J., De Grave, S., Hughes, J.M., Johnson, M.L. (2012) Regional scale speciation reveals multiple invasions of freshwater in Palaemoninae (Decapoda). Zoologica Scripta 41: 293-306.   Boone E. L.; Stewart-Koster B., Kennard, M.J. (2012) A hierarchical zero-inflated Poisson regression model for stream fish distribution and abundance. Environmetrics 23: 207-218.   Caitcheon, G.G., Olley, J., Pantus, F., Hancock, G., Leslie, C. (2012) The dominant erosion processes supplying fine sediment to three major rivers in tropical Australia, the Daly (NT), Mitchell (Qld) and Flinders (Qld) Rivers. Geomorphology 151: 188-195.   Chan, T.U., Hart, B.T., Kennard, M.J., Pusey, B.J., Shenton, W., Douglas, M.M., Valentine, E., Patel, S. (2012) Bayesian network models for environmental flow decision making in the Daly River, Northern Territory, Australia. River Research and Applications 28: 283-301. Doropoulos, C., Ward, S., Diaz-Pulido, G., Hoegh-Guldberg, O., Mumby, P.J. (2012) Ocean acidification reduces coral recruitment by disrupting intimate larval-algal settlement interactions. Ecology Letters 15: 338-346.   Diaz-Pulido, G., Anthony, K.R.N., Kline, D.I., Dove, S., Hoegh-Guldberg, O. (2012) Interactions Between Ocean Acidification And Warming On The Mortality And Dissolution Of Coralline Algae. Journal of Phycology 48: 32-39. Dung, T.P., Connell, D., Miller, G., Hodge, M., Patel, R., Cheng, R., Abeyewardene, M., Chu, C. (2012) Biological monitoring of chlorpyrifos exposure to rice farmers in Vietnam. Chemosphere 87: 294-300.   Gilby, B.L., Burfeind, D.D., Tibbetts, I.R. (2012) Better red than dead? Potential aposematism in a harpacticoid copepod, Metis holothuriae. Marine Environmental Research 74: 73-76.   Hadwen, W.L., Boon, P.I., Arthington, A.H. (2012) Aquatic ecosystems in inland Australia: tourism and recreational significance, ecological impacts and imperatives for management. Marine and Freshwater Research 63: 325-340. Hermoso, V., Kennard, M.J., Linke, S. (2012)  Integrating multidirectional connectivity requirements in systematic conservation planning for freshwater systems. Diversity and Distributions 18: 448-458. Hermoso, V., Clavero, M., Kennard, M.J. (2012) Determinants of fine-scale homogenization and differentiation of native freshwater fish faunas in a Mediterranean Basin: implications for conservation. Diversity and Distributions 18: 236-247.   Jardine, T.D., Kidd, K.A., Rasmussen, J.B. (2012) Aquatic and terrestrial organic matter in the diet of stream consumers: implications for mercury bioaccumulation. Ecological Applications 22: 843-855. Jardine, T.D., Pettit, N.E., Warfe, D.N., Pusey, B.J., Ward, D.P., Douglas, M.M., Davies, P.M., Bunn, S.E. (2012) Consumer-resource coupling in wet-dry tropical rivers.  Journal of Animal Ecology 81: 310-322. Jardine, T.D., Halliday, I.A., Howley, C., Sinnamon, V., Bunn, S.E. (2012) Large scale surveys suggest limited mercury availability in tropical north Queensland (Australia). Science of the Total Environment 416: 385-393. Jardine, T.D., Pusey, B.J., Hamilton, S.K., Pettit, N.E., Davies, P.M., Douglas, M.M., Sinnamon, V., Halliday, I.A., Bunn, S.E. (2012) Fish mediate high food web connectivity in the lower reaches of a tropical floodplain river.  Oecologia 168: 829-838.   Jomaa, S., Barry, D. A., Brovelli, A., Heng, B. C. P., Sander, G. C., Parlange, J. –Y., Rose, C.W. (2012) Rain splash soil erosion estimation in the presence of rock fragments. Catena 92: 38-48.  Lee, K-M, Lee, S.Y., Connolly, R.M. (2012) Combining process indices from network analysis with structural population measures to indicate response of estuarine trophodynamics to pulse organic enrichment. Ecological Indicators 18: 652-658. Meynecke, J-O, Grubert, M., Arthur, J.M., Boston, R.,  Lee, S.Y. (2012) The influence of the La Nina-El Nino cycle on giant mud crab (Scylla serrata) catches in Northern Australia. Estuarine Coastal And Shelf Science 100: 93-101. Naser, M. D., Page, T. J., Ng, N. K., Apel, M., Yasser, A. G., Bishop, J. M., Ng, P. K. L., Clark, P. F. (2012) Invasive records of Eriocheir hepuensis Dai, 1991 (Crustacea: Brachyura: Grapsoidea: Varunidae): implications and taxonomic considerations. BioInvasions Records 1: 71-86. Pollard, P. (2012) Fluorescence instrument for in situ monitoring of viral abundance in water, wastewater and recycled water. Journal of Virological Methods 181: 97-102.  Rolls, R.J., Boulton, A.J., Growns, I.O., Maxwell, S.E., Ryder, D.S., Westhorpe, D.P. (2012) Effects of an experimental environmental flow release on the diet of fish in a regulated coastal Australian river. Hydrobiologia 686: 195-212.   Saewstroem, C., Pollard, P. (2012) Environmental influences on virus-host interactions in an Australian subtropical reservoir. Environmental Microbiology Reports 4: 72-81.   Smith, J., Burford, M.A., Revill, A.T., Haese, R.R., Fortune, J. (2012) Effect of nutrient loading on biogeochemical processes in tropical tidal creeks. Biogeochemistry 108: 359-380.   von Rintelen, K., Page, T.J., Cai, Y., Roe, K., Stelbrink, B., Kuhajda, B.R., Iliffe, T.M., Hughes, J.M., von Rintelen, T. (2012) Drawn to the dark side: A molecular phylogeny of freshwater shrimps (Crustacea: Decapoda: Caridea: Atyidae) reveals frequent cave invasions and challenges current taxonomic hypotheses. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 63: 82-96. Witt, V., Wild, C., Anthony, K.R.N., Diaz-Pulido, G., Uthicke, S. (2011) Effects of ocean acidification on microbial community composition of, and oxygen fluxes through, biofilms from the Great Barrier Reef. Environmental Microbiology 13: 2976-2989. Back to top

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Gold Coast Campus Australian Rivers Institute Room 4.01B, Science I Building (G24) Gold Coast Campus Griffith University Qld 4222 Ph: +61 7 3735 7402 Email: ari@griffith.edu.au Nathan Campus Australian Rivers Institute Room 1.09 Environment 2 Building (N13) Nathan Campus Griffith University Qld 4111 Ph: +61 7 3735 7402 Email: ari@griffith.edu.au

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