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Category: Faculty of Sciences Engineering and Technology
PODCAST: Water: too much, too little, too dirty
Water is finally back on the global table after 46 years of not being discussed at a global scale conference. Conservation, salinity, pricing, agriculture, cultural use – the list goes on. Is the subject of ‘water rights’ at risk of getting lost in an endless talk fest? Where do we start when trying to come […]
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Shining a light on dark web wildlife trade
A huge amount of wildlife is traded on the internet, with e-commerce marketplaces, private forums and messaging apps being the most popular means to sell and buy live animals, plants, fungi and their parts and products online. University of Adelaide researchers conducted a wide-ranging study, published in the British Ecological Society journal People and Nature , to […]
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Desert “time capsules” of biodiversity support ancient, but at-risk, fauna
The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) spans almost a quarter of Australia’s landmass and is one of the largest underground freshwater sources on Earth. Basin water is concealed from the outside world by a layer of impermeable rock, but at the margins of the GAB, this layer is thinnest and allows water to seep above ground […]
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Putting the ‘history’ in ‘prehistoric’: confirming the origin of the first collection of megafauna from the Naracoorte Caves
The World Heritage listed Naracoorte Caves in southeast South Australia contain some of the world’s most valuable fossil deposits from the Quaternary period (2.5 million years ago to the present). The caves are particularly famous for their ‘megafauna’ fossils. These large animals roamed the Australian continent for most of the Quaternary, before the majority became […]
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Reef life decline following a decade of ocean warming
Dangers are lurking beneath the sea, but its not what you think. Our marine life may be out of sight, but it does not mean it is out of trouble. The majority of Australian shallow-reef species experienced steep population declines between 2008 and 2021, reports a study published in Nature this week. This trend, although not […]
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Water, Water everywhere but not a drop to drink
This was the predicament facing the sailor in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner after becoming becalmed at sea and running out of drinking water. But do we face an analogous predicament today with water resources running scarce, and if so how do we best conserve this most precious item? Lets break the issues down […]
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Highlights from the 1st Australian and New Zealand eDNA Conference
Over 370 delegates from 17 different countries attended the 1st Australian and New Zealand Environmental DNA (eDNA) Conference, held last month at the Grand Chancellor Hotel in Hobart, Tasmania. The Environment Institute was recently represented by several of its members at the Conference. Originally scheduled for March 2022, the conference was postponed as the organising […]
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Call to protect seagrass meadows in China’s waters
Seagrass meadows are crucial habitats that contribute to biodiversity, food security, and climate mitigation. However seagrasses, once common along China’s coastlines, have declined by more than 80% of the seagrass meadows in China’s coastal waters and six seagrass species have disappeared. Even the remaining seagrass meadows are now in decline, and in August 2022 the […]
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Ancient DNA reveals a hidden history of human adaptation
Humans may be just as vulnerable to environmental change as other animals, according to our new research analysing genetic data from more than a thousand people who lived across Europe and Asia over the past 45,000 years. We found traces of more than 50 “hard sweeps” in which a rare genetic variant rapidly swept through […]
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