Comparing turbine hub height wind WRF geographic configurations for Southern Australia

Correlating time series of 5 minute temporal resolution WRF wind direction and speed with automatic weather station data at a wind energy turbine hub height

Anecdotes of the Anthropocene: An anthology

These Anecdotes of the Anthropocene are curated into an anthology. Top and tailed, these twelve pieces of earthy writing reframes a long history of environmental consciousness. The creative artefact challenges readers to consider environmental activism as nothing new – and that a need for educative sign erecting endures. An anthology is a useful way to bring a suite of ‘short’ poems and prose pieces together to encapsulate a cohesive whole – a forest of individual trees. Each vignette is crafted to the norms of a literary sub-genre, but so collected, create a coherent environmental narrative. The goal of the anthology is to proffer an environmental concern via strategic storytelling. Here, the aim of strategic storytelling is to contribute to changing public ecological opinion. Thus the output seeks to motivate an illusionary and unmeasured outcome. The introduction explains the Anthropocene and sets the scene. The twelve following creative non-fiction pieces are then shuffled as: narrative journalism; Op-Ed; ecocriticism; narrative poems (a sonnet, an amphimacer and an ode); speculative non-fiction; concrete-prose; rhetoric and a memoir. The images that begin each vignette signals the theme of the piece visually. Finally, an end-piece wraps up the collection. The anthology is a work of Literary Geography. The word geography originates from the Greek geographia; further comprised of the Latin for Earth (gēo-) and writing (-graphia) – thus writing the world. An accompanying exegesis extends the literary component of the dissertation with a critical analysis of the creative artefact

Submission: Review of Australia's space industry capability issues paper August 2017: Big pictures - Some experiences with Australian Earth Observation (EO)

Submission to the Australian Government Review of Australia's Space Industry Capability Issues Paper - August 201

Comparing weather prediction information between formal and informal sources

Ex-tropical cyclone Debbie seemed to reinvigorate passing west of Brisbane during late March 2017. Despite severe weather warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology, cohesive public information concerning damaging winds was not evident. The qualitative analysis compares formal and informal media reports of the severe weather case and compares them to official warnings. The findings indicate that cohesive public information and consequent preparedness was hindered by media reporting leading up to the event

Remote sensing and atmospheric modeling in support of an atmospheric ionisation trial

The Australian Rainfall Corporation (ARC) sought support from the University Oof Queensland (UQ) to assist a trial of atmospheric ionization technology in enhancing rainfall. ARC installed the Atlant weather modification technology at Paradise Dam on the Burnett River located approximately 20 km north-west of Biggenden and 80 km south-west of Bundaberg, Queensland. The Atlant technology generates a negative ion discharge intended to produce airborne electrons that become hydrated ions and aerosols capable of being cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), thereby potentially increasing the natural creation of rainfall. This report documents: (1) the initial results of a remote sensing and image processing study to monitor cloud and atmospheric properties in the target and control area and, (2) the results of using The Air Pollution Model (TAPM) to model the transport and dispersion of the hydrated ion plume formed by the emission of negative ions from the Atlant. Results are based on observations from the 7th January 2008 to 6th February 2008. In the case of the remote sensing, nominated dates for image processing were provided by ARC for events where ARC believed rainfall enhancement occurred

Comparing sources of weather prediction information in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie

The use of social media and its efficacy as a means of communication is now well recognised in disaster research and management. In recent years, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has been establishing a presence on social media after an acknowledged slow start using the technology. Despite efforts of official sources to engage with members of the public and within specific communities via social media, effective communication during emergencies and disasters remains a challenge. A lack of preparedness emerged as an issue for residents of Queensland during and immediately after Tropical Cyclone Debbie in March 2017. This study explored the accuracy of the information provided to inform the public during this event. Weather data, public warnings and emergency information provided by official weather sources were compared with unofficial weather-based sources that were popular on social media platforms

Sustainability: A regional Australian experience of educating secondary geography teachers

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number four seeks an equitable and widespread education that enables an outcome of sustainable development by 2030. Intersecting the studies of society and earth processes, a geographical education is well placed to make cohesive sense of all the individual knowledge silos that contribute to achieving sustainability. Geography education is compulsory for the first three years of the secondary education curriculum in Australia; however, research has shown that many geography teachers are underprepared and report limitations in their teaching of sustainability. This article engages with this research problem to provide a critical reflection, using experiential knowledge as an analytical lens, on how tertiary level geography training at one Australian regional university can equip undergraduate teacher education students with the values, knowledge, and skills needed to develop their future students’ understanding and appreciation of the principles of sustainability. The authors unpacked a geography minor for a Bachelor of Secondary Education degree at Central Queensland University and, deploying content analysis, explain how three units in that minor can develop these students’ values, knowledge, and skills through fostering initiatives and activities. The analysis was framed by elements of pedagogy that offer learners a context for developing active, global citizenship and participation to understand the interdependencies of ecological, societal, and economic systems including a multisided view of sustainability and sustainable development. The study concluded that the three geography units engage student teachers in sustainable thinking in a variety of ways, which can have a wider application in the geography curricula in other teacher education courses. More importantly, however, the study found that there is a critical need for collaboration between university teachers of sustainability content and university teachers of school-based pedagogy in order to maximise the efficacy of sustainability education in schools

Guide to undertaking koala habitat health checks

The Koala Habitat Health Check is a tool for efficiently, and routinely assessing the condition of koala habitat. The check uses simple visual ‘cues’ and require no specialist skills or equipment and has been designed to work state-wide

Field Testing Satellite-Derived Vegetation Health Indices for a Koala Habitat Managers Toolkit

A Central Queensland University (CQU) partnership with the Queensland Government National Park management agency has developed a koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) habitat managers’ toolkit for vegetation health assessment. Private and public landholders use the field-based toolkit to assess habitat suitability or monitor conservation outcomes for the koala—an iconic Australian arboreal herbivorous marsupial. The toolkit was upgraded recently with instructions to process European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite-derived selected vegetation maps for areal vegetation health trend monitoring. A field campaign sought to validate the relatively coarse spatial resolution derived indices (photosynthetic health, leaf area index and leaf water content) to verify their suitability for the habitat management decision-support toolkit. Other user requirementdriven criteria for including remote sensing in the toolkit were imagery and associated processing software costs and ease of map production for habitat managers without cost-effective access to spatial science skills. Despite moderate-to-low field and image vegetation proxy correlations, discussing the results with stakeholders indicates that, at a landscape scale, the use of cost-free, suitable temporal resolution, 10-m spatial resolution imagery is satisfactory when aligned with the design outcomes of a habitat health toolkit

Pilot project: Assessing riparian vegetation and physical form using remote sensing

The aims of this project were to: (1)assess how effectively the riparian vegetation and physical form components of the ISC can be assessed using remotely sensed image data; and (2)determine whether remote sensing of the streamside zone and physical form can be included in the next state-wide application of the ISC in 2009. Additional objectives of this research included: (1)assessing if remotely sensed image data can be used to measure riparian vegetation and physical form; (2)assessing and contrasting SPOT-5 image data with image data of higher spatial resolution, i.e. QuickBird image data; (3)determining whether remotely sensed image data can be related back to the ISC field assessment data; and (4)estimating costs of using remotely sensed image data as part of the 2009 state-wide ISC assessment to derive measurements of streamside zone and physical form variables. The aims and objectives of this report are divided into a number of image processing and analysis steps. After an initial description of the image and field data sets and a presentation of the study area, this report will be presented in three main sections: (1) image preparation; (2) derivation of riparian streamside zone and physical form variables from the image data; and (3) further results, process verification and reporting of (a) the ability to integrate ISC metrics with those measurements derived from the image data and (b) a cost estimate for rolling out the remote sensing approach across Victoria. The report will finish off with an outline of limitations of this research and present a number of recommendations to overcome or reduce these limitations in future work