CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Projects currently being funded by the ZooXTM Fund:

 
Framework Working Groups

Two expert Working Groups have been established to operationalise the Research Vision and Framework by identifying gaps in knowledge and developing projects to fill those gaps: Attributes of a Sustainable Reef; Solutions and Adaptations.
In developing the project portfolio for investment, the two working groups will undertake:

  • Discussion papers
  • Pre-feasibility analysis

Funded projects identified by the Working Groups include:

  • Assisted Migration and Colonisation - Project 1: This project aims to identify the genetic markers which will support assisted migration of corals.
  • Assisted Migration and Colonisation - Project 2: This project will test the integration of heat-tolerant corals from northern reefs onto the southern Great Barier Reef.

 

Seals for the Reef

This project, carried out by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ARE CRC), will support the collection of data using southern elephant seals to better understand how the temperature, salinity, pH and other charateristics of the waters of the Southern Ocean are changing. Changes to these characteristics in cool and cold water, where they are experienced first, will provide early warning of similar and subsequent changes in the tropical and sub-tropical regions like those surrounding the Great Barrier Reef. Predicitons of this change will be immesely valueable to the effectiveness of adaption efforts on the GBR.

Data is gathered through the use of satellite tags which are glues to the fur on the head of the seals and fall off when the seal moults each summer (providing an average of nine months data collection). They measure temperature, salinity and depth as the seals dive for food. When the seals surface to breath the data is transmitted by satellite to receiving stations on land.

Link to Seals for the Reef website.

 

Smart State Premier’s Fellowship

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland, a member of the Foundation’s ISAC, is the recent recipient of the prestigious Smart State Premier’s Fellowship (2009 – 2013). The Foundation is a co-investor of this Fellowship with the Queensland Government. This Smart State Fellowship research program aims to rapidly broaden our understanding and increase our capacity to respond to the threat posed to the Great Barrier Reef by ocean warming and ocean acidification.  Work has begun on several fronts:

  • Designing climate change tools: This work is focusing on the development of web-based tools that will enable Reef managers to quickly and easily access different data sets and predictive models. These tools will enhance understanding of global change and its influence on ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), and facilitate the planning and implementation of appropriate management strategies. It is anticipated that a preliminary set of tools with both private and public access points will be available in late 2010.
  • Developing partnerships: Prof Hoegh-Gulberg’s group has developed extensive partnerships with the two leading international satellite agencies, NASA and NOAA.  (National Oceanic and Atmosphospheric Administration), and is developing partnerships with a number of non-governmental networks such as CoralWatch (www.coralwatch.org) and Reef Check (www.reefcheck.org).
  • Ecological vulnerability assessment undertaken in partnership with GBRF: Prof Hoegh-Guldberg has developed a partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and now chairs the Foundation’s ‘Attributes of a Sustainable Reef Working Group’ (involving 14 scientists from UQ, JCU, CSIRO, AIMS, and GBRMPA). This working group was established to develop a set of criteria (attributes) for the Great Barrier Reef which define its unique values, and to identify which values are vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

 

Specific projects being pursued under this Fellowship include:
Zooxanthellae: genetic tolerance to climate change

This project investigates the genetic variation in symbiotic zooxanthellae that exists in hard and soft coral along the GBR in different conditions (particularly thermal environments). This project has so far identified 85 different types of Symbiodinium in three different locations, in addition to the existing types identified in other studies worldwide.

Conducting diversity surveys in different regions provides insight into how geographical isolation, environmental conditions, and host biology influence the evolution between endosymbionts and their hosts. Through identifying the distribution and abundance of different types of Symbiodinium and the associated host tolerance ranges, it will be possible to develop better management strategies to minimise climate impacts and optimise them for different areas.

 

Water and light on the Great Barrier Reef (also linked to the e-Atlas)

University of Queensland researchers have been able to harness daily NASA satellite data to measure water clarity at small scale resolution across the Reef. This satellite data has been validated by measurements in the field using Secchi disks.
Further analysis of historical water clarity data has allowed researchers to:

  • Establish benchmark water clarity values across the Reef,
  • Identify how events (eg. cyclones, ocean current eddies) drive changes to water clarity  and
  • Identify specific areas of the Reef that may be more vulnerable than others. 

This project enables the development of such tools as Reef vulnerability zoning and early warning systems for coral bleaching. These tools will be invaluable for Reef management and developing our response to the impacts of climate change.

 

Reef-scale ocean acidification project

 This project will explore and define the rates at which reefs break down due to ocean acidification.

 

 

Current and Previous Progress Reports:

Current and previous project progress reports can be found on the ZooXTM main page here.