Congratulations to barefoot researcher Luke Andrews

Congratulations to barefoot researcher Luke Andrews for completing his Honours with First Class following assessment by international experts in the field. Luke’s honours revealed how land use change influences greenhouse gas emissions in freshwater creeks from the Coffs Harbour region. Here are some photos of Luke presenting his research in the NSW Coastal Conference in 2009 and doing filed work.

Great time had in Barcelona and Kristineberg!

Check out a few pictures of us working hard from 9 to 5, and playing hard from 5 to 9. 

Presentations at the premier international geochemistry conference in Barcelona (Goldschmidt) and writing retreat in Sweden.

Praktan Wadnerkar: Submarine groundwater discharge and nutrient fluxes in a natural mangrove versus artificial canal estate

Kay Davis: 50 years of ecosystem calcification estimates: Evidence for recovery

Isaac Santos: Submarine groundwater discharge: a driver of buffer of ocean acidification?

Rogger Correa: Submarine groundwater discharge and associated nutrient and carbon inputs into Sydney Harbour, Australia

Stephen Conrad: Sediment and water quality across a freshwater estuarine continuum from a coastal horticultural catchment

Shane White: Large aquatic nitrous oxide emissions downstream of intensive horticulture following rain events

Xiaogang Chen: Karstic submarine groundwater discharge into the Mediterranean: Radon-based nutrient fluxes in an anchialine cave and a basin-wide upscaling.

International Connections

By Tristan McKenzie

As I've been sitting in the Sydney Airport for the last ten hours waiting for my horrendously delayed flight home to Honolulu to finally take off, I've had some time to reflect a bit about my stay in Australia and the connections I've made. While I came here to specifically work with one person, I've formed working relationships and connections with many. From graduate students working on research both similar and dissimilar to my own, to professors and researchers both at Southern Cross University as well as abroad - and these new connections will (most likely) lead to future collaborations.

Unlike most of the other LOREX students who are traveling as cohorts to their respective destinations abroad, I was the only student working in Coffs Harbour. This forced me to navigate a new environment and seek out new friendships on my own. I was fortunate to make a lot of really good friends in Coffs Harbour and I'm very thankful for them showing me around.

My time at the National Marine Science Centre has been very productive - I've completed much of the lab work and have even started writing up my results. In the next few weeks back in Hawaiʻi, I will complete the remaining lab analyses using instrumentation/techniques available at my home institution. During my last week in Australia, I finished up the Australia portion of my lab work, gave a talk about my research in Hawaiʻi and Sydney, and assisted some grad students with their fieldwork.

Lunch with Isaac's lab group, which is very international. The people in this photo come from seven different countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Columbia, India, Japan, and the USA.

I am very thankful that I've had the opportunity for this experience - both to the ASLO LOREX (and NSF for funding LOREX!) program as well as Isaac for hosting (and making sure my stay was both productive and enjoyable). I look forward to future collaborations!

SCU’s 2018 Excellence in Engagement Awards

The Barefoot Team just picked SCU’s 2018 Excellence in Engagement Awards for their work with water quality!

The Engaged Research award went to Prof. Isaac Santos, Mr Shane White, Mr Stephen Conrad, A./Prof. Christian Sanders “For community-driven water quality research to protect, rehabilitate and manage iconic streams, estuaries and the Solitary Islands Marine Park.”

A./Prof. Christian Sanders, Mr Shane White, Mr Stephen Conrad, Prof. Isaac Santos.

Here is a link to a video featuring our community-star PhD student Shane White explaining this work.

NMSC Hosting new PhD student visitors!

It is a pleasure to host our new PhD student visitors!

Mithra-Christin Hajati comes from Nils Moosdorf’s lab at the ZMT Germany and will further develop her SGD modelling work.

Xiaogang Chen comes from Jinzhou Du’s lab at the State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research Shanghai, China. He will work on geochemical tracers and carbon cycling in mangroves.

We look forward to hanging out with them and learning about their work!

 

Xiaogang Chen

Mithra-Christin Hajati

Great projects, great work, and great delivery!

Congrats to barefoot PhD student Kay Davis for winning the best presentation at SCU’s RISE Conference last week. Kay’s presentation was on “Short- and long-term drivers of coral reef ecosystem metabolism”.

And congrats to another barefoot PhD student James Tucker for the third place with his talk “Tracing the leachate plume of whale carcass decomposition in beach groundwater”.

Great projects, great work, and great delivery!