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Experimental sediment mesocosms deployed in Sydney Harbour.

    Coastal and estuarine systems are amongst the most productive and diverse ecosystems in the world. These environments also support more than 85% of Australia’s population, while internationally, half of the world's population lives within 200 km of the coast.
     
    As a result, coastal ecosystems are subject to immense anthropogenic pressures from rapid urbanisation, expanding industry and shipping. A continuous supply of chemical contaminants enter coastal waters where they accumulate at significant concentrations in the sediments. This 'sink' of contaminants poses a threat to organisms estuary-wide during sediment resuspension events.
     
    Importantly, it is also within the sediment matrix that essential cycling of C and N occurs. While many these processes are mediated by microbes, our current understanding of naturally occuring microbial communities remains limited due to their previously unseen diversity and many unmapped functions. In contaminated estuarine sediments, the interaction between microbes and contaminants requires further study to determine whether it is resilience or impediment of microbial function in response to anthropogenic modification that is occurring. This is the focus of my PhD research where I use cutting-edge sequencing technologies to investigate the effects of anthropogenic contaminants on microbial communities.
     
    Can we use molecular tools for rapid sediment health assessment?
     
    Initial survey work of eight estuaries along the NSW coast reveals 'ecogenomic signatures' of healthy and stressed benthic microbial communities.
     
    Does change in microbial community structure translate to change in community function? 

    I am also interested in measuring the functional attributes of sediment microbial communities under different environmental pressures to better understand the implications of these changes on the ecosystem function.

    My Research

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