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Mangroves

Regional-scale aerial surveys of mangroves across northern Australia

We conduct large-scale shoreline surveys and monitoring of mangrove ecosystems to assess the impacts of sea level rise, extreme climate events, and human activities. These surveys provide crucial information to inform effective protection and restoration efforts for these habitats.

Featured project

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Mangroves are crucial for coastal ecosystems, providing nursery habitats, protecting shorelines, and acting as significant carbon sinks.

Our projects focus on monitoring, assessing, and restoring mangrove ecosystems to address environmental changes and impacts. We provide expert advice, conduct detailed floristic surveys, and develop effective mitigation strategies to support conservation and sustainable management efforts.

We surveyed over 250 km of coastline with First Nations partners to assess the impact of flooding caused by Tropical Cyclone Jasper, one year after the flood event.

Assessing the impacts of flooding after Tropical Cyclone Jasper

Monitoring

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COMING SOON

We are collaborating with Gladstone Ports and Gidarjil Land and Sea Rangers on a program for mangrove monitoring, with indications of decline in mangrove condition triggering mitigation action by ports management.

Alert to Action program for mangroves affected by major port operations

Monitoring, Community

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COMING SOON

We conduct large-scale shoreline surveys and monitoring of mangrove ecosystems to assess the impacts of sea level rise, extreme climate events, and human activities. These surveys provide crucial information to inform effective protection and restoration efforts for these habitats.

Regional-scale aerial surveys of mangroves across northern Australia

Monitoring

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COMING SOON

This project identifies potential wetland restoration sites between Cairns and Gladstone.

Scoping coastal wetlands and suitable trees for blue carbon restoration

Monitoring

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COMING SOON

We are identifying causes, drivers, and severity of mangrove damage for effective mitigation and restoration. This includes assessing threats to adjoining mangrove areas and estimating recovery time for mangroves to return to a healthy state.

Forensic assessments of mangrove damage

Research

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COMING SOON

We provide environmental managers and policymakers with expert advice on the presence and importance of mangroves in specific areas. We assess risks to mangroves near operational works like dredging or reclamation and recommend monitoring systems to ensure construction activities proceed with appropriate warnings if necessary.

Expert advice on mangroves and tidal wetlands

Research

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COMING SOON

We conduct floristic surveys for biogeographic, taxonomic, and productivity investigations of mangrove ecosystems, and offer specific advice on species identification from ad hoc collections and large field surveys, including naming unidentified plants. Surveys cover mangrove structure and biomass, carbon sequestration, permanent forest plots, rapid leaf removal census, water mouse presence, and investigations into phenology, wood growth rings, and eDNA.

Floristic surveys of mangrove ecosystems

Research

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COMING SOON

Projects

Adam Canning

Senior Research Officer

adam.canning@jcu.edu.au

Adam’s interests lie in investigating nature-based solutions to have a productive agricultural landscape within ecologically healthy catchments that support high water security. He has experience in using network modelling to better under the flow of nutrients (carbon and nitrogen) through catchments and aquatic ecosystems, species distribution modelling, catchment land use planning, sports fish and game bird management, and the interface between freshwater science and policy/planning. At present, he is on working on how wetlands and regenerative actions can be incorporated into our landscapes to increase food production, improve water quality or buffer against climate change.

Norm Duke

Senior Research Scientist

norman.duke@jcu.edu.au

Norman C Duke (MSc, PhD) is a mangrove ecologist with 50 years’ experience.  During this time, he has become a specialist in global mangrove floristics, biogeography, climate change adaptation, vegetation mapping, pollution and coastal habitat condition assessments. Before James Cook University, Norm gathered experience at the University of Queensland, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, where he developed his further specialist knowledge of the fate and impact of large oil spills on mangrove forests. He has since expanded this knowledge to include the damage, recovery and consequences on mangrove ecosystems of a variety of impacting agents including herbicides, severe tropical cyclones, and extreme changes in sea level and climate. With a particular interest in northern Australia because of the diverse set of topographic, environmental and climatic conditions, Norm currently leads an active research group on marine tidal wetlands at TropWATER. He regularly conducts exploratory research investigations and provides managers with effective monitoring and mitigation of disturbed and damaged tidal wetland ecosystems. Norm has published more than 280 articles and technical reports, including his authoritative book Australia’s Mangroves (2006), and has developed a smart device app for the identification of all mangrove species in the world. Norm heads the JCU Mangrove Hub and not-for-profit community-science partnership called MangroveWatch.

Sigit Deni Sasmito

Senior Research Officer

sigitdeni.sasmito@jcu.edu.au

Sigit Sasmito is a wetlands ecologist who has more than 12 years of experience in researching to assess the roles and impacts of tropical wetlands for climate change mitigation and adaptation, especially through peatland and blue carbon ecosystems. His research interests focus on carbon monitoring, greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, ecosystem restoration assessment and natural carbon capture and removal. He uses multiple approaches such as systematic review and meta-analysis, spatial mapping and field assessment. His works are closely relevant to policies and decision-makers, specifically by providing science-based evidence on how to include wetlands conservation and restoration into national emissions reduction targets. He holds a PhD in Environmental Science from Charles Darwin University, Australia and a BSc in Applied Meteorology from IPB University, Indonesia. He has previous extensive research collaboration experiences at the National University of Singapore and CIFOR-ICRAF in Indonesia. Sigit is an active member of Science Technical Working Group for UN Global Ocean Decade Programme for Blue Carbon (GO-BC).

Tertius de Kluyver

Adjunct Senior Research Fellow

tertius.dekluyver@jcu.edu.au

Tertius has applied his marine science, biochemistry, and occupational hygiene knowledge and skills across a range of environmental issues over a forty-year career. Early career highlights include helping to establish Tasmania’s first oyster hatchery at Bicheno, managing asbestos and other environmental issues within Queensland’s state schools, undertaking research across a range of environmental disciplines at the CSIRO Marine Laboratories (Cleveland, Qld), Lions Cancer Institute (UQ), and at QUT, and developing and teaching a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses on environmental management and marine science in Australia and the USA. Tertius entered the Commonwealth Public Service on return from the USA, initially working on air quality policy development. Here he developed the emission models and cost benefit analysis that led to the establishment of Australia’s first emission standards for non-road two-stroke petrol engines. Tertius then moved to the Climate Change Division and over the following decade worked as a member of the team that produces Australia’s annual greenhouse gas accounts reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). He specialised in waste and land-based emissions and was singularly responsible for establishing the wetland greenhouse gas accounts for coastal wetlands (mangroves, tidal marsh and seagrass), farm dams and reservoirs. He later collaborated with Australian academics to improve the farm-dam and reservoir accounts resulting in two co-authorships on peer-reviewed papers, with a third currently in preparation. In retirement Tertius continues to be actively involved in promoting the work of the UNFCCC as a registered member of the Roster of Experts (RoE), the group that undertakes formal audits of all annual GHG accounts and associated reports submitted to the UNFCCC. Tertius is also lead author on four draft IUCN Red List of Ecosystem Assessments for Australia’s mangrove communities and is finalising this work in collaboration with JCU and other Australian scientists.

Researchers

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Mulloy R, Aiken CM, Dwane G, Ellis M, Jackson EL.

Mangroves

Scalable mangrove rehabilitation: Roots of success for Rhizophora stylosa establishment.

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Sasmito SD, Taillardat P, Adinugroho WC, et al.

Mangroves

Half of land use carbon emissions in Southeast Asia can be mitigated through peat swamp forest and mangrove conservation and restoration.

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zu Ermgassen PSE, Worthington TA, Gair JR, et al.

Mangroves

Mangroves support an estimated annual abundance of over 700 billion juvenile fish and invertebrates.

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Royna M, Murdiyarso D, Sasmito SD, Arriyadi D, Rahajoe JS, Zahro MG, Ardhani TSP.

Mangroves

Carbon stocks and effluxes in mangroves converted into aquaculture: a case study from Banten province, Indonesia.

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Murdiyarso D, Swails E, Hergoualc'h K, Bhomia R, Sasmito SD.

Mangroves

Refining greenhouse gas emission factors for Indonesian peatlands and mangroves to meet ambitious climate targets.

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Bourgeois CR, MacKenzie RA, Sharma S, et al.

Mangroves

Four decades of data indicate that planted mangroves stored up to 75% of the carbon stocks found in intact mature stands.

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Michaud E, Aschenbroich A, Stieglitz T, Brunier G, Curwood Aller R, Anthony E, Fromard F, Thouzeau G.

Mangroves

Upscaling the contribution of crab burrows to mangrove ecosystem functioning in French Guiana (South America).

ACCESS

Canning A & Duke NC.

Mangroves

Southern Great Barrier Reef Mangrove and Saltmarsh Condition Survey 2023.

Reports and publications

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