Geoscience for Marine Environmental Management

Project description

Geoscience Australia provides scientific products and expert advice and information to the Department of Environment & Heritage as required to support regional marine planning and the design of a national representative system of marine protected areas. Geoscience Australia is also represented on the science advisory panel for the design of a marine protected area network for the southeast region.

One of the biggest challenges facing marine managers is deciding how to provide adequate protection for the marine environment in regions where detailed biological information is lacking.

There are many gaps in our knowledge of the distribution and diversity of marine organisms and so there is a need to determine the extent to which physical parameters (i.e., substrate type, grain size, slope, etc) are an indicator of seabed biodiversity.

• determining physical parameters that characterise habitats and affect the types and abundance of marine organisms;
• identifying physical parameters that best capture the known distributions and diversity of benthic biota; and
• developing physical indicators for benthic biodiversity that can be applied in the selection of marine protected areas.

The results will be reported in the scientific literature to build on the growing interest in this research and to address the need to find better ways to protect Australia's marine ecosystems.

Key collaborators in this work are CSIRO - Marine and Atmospheric Research.

Examples showing the preference of different types of biota for different substrate types in the marine environment.