In sharp contrast to the seed-eating songbirds he studied for his PhD, Flinders graduate Toby Galligan is now on a mission to save birds that live off the bodies of the dead.

After completing his PhD on the evolutionary ecology of Darwin’s small ground finch in 2010, Dr Galligan (pictured) took up a position with the UK-based  Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), with the task of helping to protect vultures from chemical poisoning in Nepal and India.

Among the world’s most misunderstood creatures, South Asian vultures are now under significant threat – with three species listed as critically endangered – due to their susceptibility to diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug which is administered to ailing cattle in South Asia.

While vultures can consume bacteria-infested carcasses without repercussion, they have a particular sensitivity to diclofenac so when they feed on contaminated cattle carcasses their kidneys become clogged with uric acid, leading to visceral gout, renal failure and certain death.

Alongside a global network of conservation experts known as SAVE (Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction), Dr Galligan and the RSPB are trying to halt the decline in vulture populations and provide an environment free from diclofenac and similar toxic drugs.

Dr Galligan said that despite a ban on the manufacture, sale, importation and use of veterinary diclofenac by the Indian, Nepali, Pakistani and Bangladeshi governments, the drug still remains the cure-all of choice among untrained veterinarians, which make up the majority of veterinarians working in these countries.

“Diclofenac came onto the market in the ‘90s and by 2000 the population of oriental white-backed Gyps vultures declined by 99.9 per cent – that is, one in every 1000 birds survived – which is an unprecedented rate of decline – even faster than the decline of the dodo,” Dr Galligan said.

“While the South Asia governments banned the manufacture and use of veterinary diclofenac in the early 2000s, many pharmaceutical companies circumvent the ban by selling diclofenac for human use in 30ml vials, which contain the right size dose for treating cattle,” he said.

Dr Galligan said SAVE and the RSPB were now trying to promote a vulture-safe alternative to diclofenac, known as meloxicam, among livestock owners, untrained vets and pharmacists, and was also advocating for a ban on the 30ml human-intended vials.

A number of “vulture safe zones” have also been set up to conserve the remaining Gyps populations, with a focus on raising community awareness and thereby clearing the environment of contaminated vulture food. In addition, the three critically endangered Gyps species are being bred in captivity for future release.

However Dr Galligan said the battle was far from over, with more research to be carried out on the susceptibility of the elusive red-headed vulture to diclofenac poisoning.

“Very little is known about the ecology, biology and threats to this species but what we do know for certain is that, like the three Gyps, the red-headed vulture is critically endangered and rapidly declining.

“I’ll be leading a satellite telemetry study of mature red-headed vultures so we can learn more about their ecology and if one of our tagged vultures dies, we will be able to locate the carcass and perform a post mortem which will provide the best evidence of the possible cause of decline.

“When we know what is causing the decline in this species, we can either incorporate it into existing conservation action for Gyps vultures or design specific conservation action.”

Sea lions ©SATC

Like whales, sea lions are contributing to marine ecosystems in the most fundamental way possible, research by a Flinders graduate has found.

Dr Trish Lavery, who established that Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon emissions by defecating iron on phytoplankton, has found that the digestive mechanisms of Australian sea lions mean that they too are making vital nutrients available to the first tier of the marine food chain.

Her research, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, found that the sea lion gut has a characteristic microbiome, or bacterial profile, that is high in types of bacteria able to metabolise iron and phosphorus.

“While bacteria are net consumers of nutrients in energy-poor environments, in nutrient-rich environments like the surface of a faecal particle, bacteria can make soluble more vital nutrient elements from faecal matter than they require for their own growth,” Dr Lavery said.

“This leads to leaching of these nutrients into the surrounding waters where they can become available for free living phytoplankton microbes.”

Dr Lavery said the sea lions may therefore help to keep nutrients where they can be incorporated into the food chain.

“The bacteria in Australian sea lion faeces may limit nutrient sinkage to depth and enhance the persistence of nutrients in the photic zone where they are available to support primary production by phytoplankton.”

And for creatures whose cold marine environment makes a layer of protective fat a valuable asset, Dr Lavery also found evidence that the metabolism of sea lions is actually geared towards obesity.

Her study found a ratio of crucial bacteria similar to that in previous studies of obese humans and obese mice.

“This suggests that the gut microbiome may confer a predisposition towards the excess body fat that is needed for thermoregulation within the cold oceanic habitats foraged by Australian sea lions,” she said.

Salt water from the Indian Ocean about to meet fresh water from Moore River, Western Australia. © iStockphoto

A team of Flinders University researchers has developed a new method for predicting how much seawater will intrude into underground water storage systems in the future.

Led by Associate Professor Adrian Werner, from the School of the Environment, the team has devised a new maths-based approach to estimate the vulnerability of coastal aquifers to seawater intrusion, with the research recently published in the international journal Ground Water.

Seawater intrusion is a major problem that occurs in coastal areas as a result of salt water encroaching from the ocean into freshwater storage systems below the earth’s surface, known as aquifers, contaminating the water stores.

“Seawater is denser than freshwater so it pushes into the aquifer in a wedge-like shape,” PhD candidate Leanne Morgan, who helped develop the new method, said.

“When you stress the system, predominately by removing too much water, the wedge moves inland and contaminates the freshwater, meaning, for example, bores go salty – it can often be very sudden and unexpected, and sometimes virtually irreversible.”

Unlike the existing, subjective methods for rapidly assessing seawater intrusion vulnerability, Ms Morgan said the Flinders approach was theoretically based, employing both maths and physics to estimate the sensitivity of aquifers to different stresses, for example climate change.

“We took an existing mathematical model for estimating the extent of seawater intrusion and extended it using calculus to develop equations that describe the propensity for seawater to move into aquifers under different stresses, including sea level rise, pumping and recharge change.”

Meanwhile, Ms Morgan is working on a wider study, funded through the National Water Commission, to identity high-risk aquifers along Australia’s coastline.

Results of the National Scale Vulnerability Assessment of Seawater Intrusion study – a collaboration between the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training and Geoscience Australia – are expected to be released next month.

“More than 85 per cent of Australians live within 50km of the coast and with the population increasing and climate change pressures, it’s important to assess the threats to coastal aquifers because they are a major water resource,” Ms Morgan said.

“The concern is that with increased extraction, rising sea levels and reduced recharge due to reduced rainfall, our coastal aquifers will become more at risk from seawater intrusion.”

The $8 million Biology Discovery Centre under construction at Flinders is to have its own population of penguins.

As well as contributing to research into reasons for the decline of Little Penguin numbers in the wild, having penguins on-site will play a major role in the University’s teaching programs in animal behaviour.

Biologist Professor Sonia Kleindorfer said it is expected that 10 penguins will live in a specially designed enclosure in the Animal Compound, adjacent to the new building.

Pairs of Little Penguins from the Granite Island Penguin Conservation group and the Adelaide Zoo will be lent to Flinders, and it is hoped that the School of Biological Sciences will eventually be able to breed up its own colony.

A number of the Flinders penguin colony will join lizards and songbirds in the Centre’s three-storey ecosystem or “eco-dome”, which will be connected to the first-floor animal behaviour laboratory.

The animal burrows in the ecosystem will be wired for sound and visuals and the live feeds transmitted to the laboratory, while built-in scales will allow animals to be weighed without being handled.

“Students will be able to learn how to do statistical analysis and data presentation non-invasively, and while they’re doing it they get to watch the animals, which will complement their field trips,” Professor Kleindorfer said.

“We’ll be combining teaching principles about animal welfare, best practice and non-invasive observation.”

Teaching in the new building will begin at the start of Semester 2 in July, while the dome is due to be ready for its animal occupants in October.

Other parts of the Centre will be dedicated to teaching in molecular biology and microbiology. Professor Kleindorfer said the top floor of the Centre, which will offer training for postgraduate research students, will house other experimental animals, such as insect colonies.

The design and landscaping of the larger penguin pond in the Animal Compound will have input from Flinders biology student Simon Brown, who also happens to be an architect and the designer of Melbourne Zoo’s award-winning penguin enclosure.

The refurbishment of the Animal Compound will include a new walkway that will allow school groups to tour the facility, which also houses aviaries, aquaculture fish tanks, a native plant garden, and a glass house dedicated to sustainable food production and plant pathology research.

Professor Kleindorfer said most of the species that will occupy the ecosystem are endangered.

“A big part of the reason for having the penguins here is to enhance our collective awareness of the plight of creatures we generally don’t see.”

Ranger Uranium Mine, Northern Territory

Dealing with groundwater at mine sites – from the conceptual phase of mine planning through to operations and closure – is the focus of a new course being run by the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), based at Flinders University.

The three-day course, to be held in Perth in July and Brisbane in August, will explore the various issues relating to mining and groundwater, from the early stages of extracting groundwater to build a mine, known as mine dewatering, to the management of waste rock and potential contamination.

Dr Lloyd Townley, Director of NTEC Environmental Technology and co-convener of the NCGRT course, said dewatering was often assumed to be the single most important groundwater-related issue for the mining industry, although there were many other aspects for engineers, groundwater scientists and other specialists to consider.

“Mine dewatering is certainly important for access and safety reasons but it’s also important to decide how to best use that water,” Dr Townley said.

“Sometimes it’s evaporated, sometimes it’s used in the process of extracting minerals from the rocks and sometimes it’s injected back into the ground so there are a lot of issues with how you manage the water that’s taken from the ground,” he said.

“It’s also essential to consider issues relating to contamination caused by waste rock – with mining you target particular rock types that contain minerals but in the process you need to bring other rock to the surface which is placed in waste rock dumps or in tailings storage facilities.

“When exposed to air and water, the sulphides in waste rock and tailings can produce sulphuric acid and lead to metals being transported off the mine site by rainwater or surface drainage, potentially contaminating nearby streams, rivers, lakes and groundwater resources.”

Dr Townley said the course will cover the full spectrum of mining activities, including iron ore, coal, gold and copper, and will explore issues at all stages of mine development – from the early conceptual stage to feasibility studies, construction, operation and finally rehabilitation and closure.

John Waterhouse, a Principal Hydrogeologist with Golder Associates and co-convener of the NCGRT course, said it was crucial for both mining personnel and groundwater specialists to be well-trained and to communicate across the various aspects of groundwater and mining.

“In the future, Australia and the world will have a number of ongoing challenges at some sites long after mining has finished,” Mr Waterhouse said.

“For mining companies and the community, mining presents benefits and challenges.

“It’s also an opportunity for people in the workforce to forge careers in the management of groundwater at mine sites from early investigation phases and, at some sites, long after they’ve closed.”

Groundwater in Mining will be held in Perth from 25-27 July and in Brisbane from 1-3 August. For more information or to book call (08) 8201 5632 or email industrytraining@groundwater.com.au

Having spent the past five years researching the endangered pygmy bluetongue lizard, Dr Melissa Pettigrew felt it was time to “mix things up”.

In April 2011 the then Flinders University student submitted her thesis on the conservation of Australia’s pygmy population – and in that same week boarded a plane to China on a nine-month stint to save the Siberian tiger from human impacts.

“My PhD was in conservation biology so I thought it would be a good opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge that I gained through my research of lizards to the conservation of Siberian tigers,” Dr Pettigrew (pictured, at the Chinese/Russian border) said of her volunteer efforts.

“I also work with koalas so I guess it was a good chance to mix things up a bit,” she said.

During her stay in China, as part of the Australian Youth Ambassador program, she worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society to tackle the growing issue of human wildlife conflict.

“In China there are a lot of poor rural communities which rely on cattle farming as their source of income but snares are set in the reserve and surrounding area to catch and kill deer so they can be sold primarily on the black market,” she said.

“Unfortunately the snares reduce the ungulate (hoofed animal) population which is the primary food source for the tiger population.

“Tigers are therefore now preying upon cattle to substitute their diet and this unfortunately creates human-tiger conflict.”

Her main work in China involved snare removal campaigns and improving a scheme which provides compensation to farmers whose cows have been eaten by tigers.

“I spent a lot of time physically removing the snares from the reserves and surrounding areas – it was partly to conserve the deer population but about one tiger a year gets killed by a snare and that’s a lot considering there’s only 18 to 25 Siberian tigers left in China,” she said.

Despite working on the conservation of two very different animals, Dr Pettigrew said there were several skills she learnt throughout her thesis which she was able to apply in China.

“During my PhD I learnt a lot about how to get funding so that really helped when I was over there, and I also learnt how to write for publications so hopefully one of the articles I wrote on human wildlife conflict in China will be published in an international journal later this year.

“My background in conservation definitely helped but it was still a huge learning curve to work on the other side of conservation, where you have to weigh up the livelihood of farmers and their families versus the protection of an endangered animal.”

Dr Pettigrew, who officially graduated with her PhD from Flinders last month, says she is unsure whether she will pursue her work with lizards or tigers, but for now she is happy to continue her much-loved job as a koala keeper at Cleland Wildlife Park.

“Sometimes I get asked what my favourite animal is but I don’t have a favourite – to me it’s more about the conservation of the species rather than the species itself.”

In South Australia’s arid landscape, rivers, creeks and streams are vital sources of groundwater.

But National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) researcher Dr Jordi Batlle-Aguilar (pictured) says there is virtually no accurate way of knowing how much water seeps from river beds into the ground because traditional testing methods are largely unreliable.

Streams in arid and semi-arid areas only flow after heavy rain and storms, and their water rapidly infiltrates through to underground permeable rocks, such as sandstone, or unconsolidated materials including gravel and sand.

These permeable rocks and unconsolidated materials form a natural underground water storage system – known as an aquifer – which saturates and holds the water, similarly to a sponge, so that it can be extracted in the summer months when water is scarce and replenished in winter.

Dr Batlle-Aguilar said the standard method to measure infiltration did not give reliable estimates at the scale of interest because it simply provided an average for the whole river, even though infiltration “varies greatly” from site to site depending on soil type, gravel content and root presence.

“The conventional way to test infiltration is to put a cylinder filled with water, known as infiltrometer, 5- 10cm under the streambed and measure how much water sinks down over a period of time,” Dr Batlle-Aguilar, based at the NCGRT at Flinders University, said.

“But the results can be completely different at different points because the soil is highly heterogeneous, so if there were big bits of gravel in one part of the river the water would infiltrate faster than another area, so it’s not representative of the true infiltration rate,” he said.

“One value can be very different from another just a metre away, therefore it’s not appropriate to extrapolate one measured value, at the centimeter scale, to a total value for a whole stream.”

As part of his ongoing research, Dr Batlle-Aguilar took his team to Pedler Creek, an intermittent stream in the Willunga Basin, in 2011 to find a better way of measuring river infiltration that would provide more reliable and representative values.

The team isolated an area of the creek using two steel panels placed 7m apart and pumped water continuously into the dammed section of the creek, maintaining three constant water levels over five days. This allowed the team to measure infiltration over a much larger area of the river bed than the standard approaches would normally permit.

By knowing the pumping rate required to maintain a constant level of water in the stream, the researchers could deduce how much water infiltrated from the stream and potentially recharged the aquifer.

“The water must be going somewhere if it’s staying at the same level so we recorded how much water we were pumping into the isolated stream to maintain that constant level, which gave us an accurate value of infiltration,” Dr Batlle-Aguilar said.

He said it was crucial to understand the infiltration rate from rivers to prevent “overexploitation” of aquifers.

“South Australia in particular has lots of dry streams which only flow after storms but it’s really important to know how much water infiltrates from them.

“Knowing how much recharge occurs from rivers to aquifers helps us to determine how much we ‘earn’ and this in turn can guide how much we should be ‘spending’ from our ‘water budget’.”

The research, which has been spearheaded by Professor Peter Cook, Deputy Director of the NCGRT, is expected to be published in a scientific journal later this year.

Visiting water scientists from Laos have added to their expertise by undertaking an Australian Groundwater School short course, and have also made preliminary links with researchers at Flinders.

The trio were environmental scientist Mr Kanya Souksakoun, engineer Mr Khaykeo Keokhamphui (both from the National University of Laos), and Ms Bounyaseng Sengkhammy, chief of the Environment Resources Centre in the Ministry of National Resources and Environment.

They attended the intensive course on the fundamentals of groundwater science, technology and management. The Australian Groundwater School is run by the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, based at Flinders.

Professor Craig Simmons, Director of the NCGRT, said that managing groundwater resources is a global issue.

“While the NCGRT courses have an Australian focus, our programs are also designed to contribute to the dissemination of groundwater science internationally,” Professor Simmons said.

Ms Sengkhammy said that understanding groundwater systems was of special importance in Laos, where much of the population is still reliant on groundwater for their drinking supplies. She said contamination from chemicals, including arsenic, was a major issue of concern.

The initial impetus for the visit came from Flinders graduate and former student of Professor Simmons, Dr Paul Pavelic, who is now Senior Researcher and Office Head of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Andhra Pradesh, India. The visit was supported by the Crawford Fund.

In addition to attending the short course, the visitors toured research laboratories and met academics from water-related courses and research centres in the School of the Environment.

The visitors expressed a strong interest in exploring further academic and research links with Flinders, particularly in the area of postgraduate research projects relating to groundwater and environmental health.

A project in West Bengal, India, to remove arsenic from groundwater. Credit: Ravakrishna Vivikananda Mission

In the driest inhabited continent on earth, underground water accounts for a large portion of Australia’s most precious resource – freshwater.

But, under certain circumstances, groundwater can be threatened by naturally occurring arsenic which is one of the most serious threats to groundwater quality on a global scale.

This very problem has prompted Ilka Wallis, a PhD candidate in Flinders University’s School of the Environment, to investigate exactly how arsenic may leach into underground water.

Groundwater is found in aquifers which sit deep below the earth’s surface and are made up of porous rocks and gravel such as sandstone which saturate and hold the water, almost like a sponge. Arsenic can be present in these rocks, but how it can leach into groundwater is still not fully understood.

As part of her research, Ms Wallis has studied the geology, hydrology and chemistry of affected sites in the US and the Netherlands to work out how arsenic made its way into those systems, and the extent of the problem.

“Naturally occurring arsenic is present in rocks and it normally doesn’t get into groundwater but sometimes there are circumstances when it’s released and when that happens it can be potentially devastating,” Ms Wallis said.

Previous laboratory studies have found that common naturally-occurring geological and chemical processes can play an important role in controlling arsenic in groundwaters.

As these processes are often complex and interlinked, Ms Wallis’ research has focused on “numerical modelling tools” to integrate diverse data sets, including geological, chemical and hydrological information, to understand why arsenic may have been released into the groundwater.

She said her research was one of the first studies where the extent of the leakage of arsenic was quantified on a field-sized basis using numerical modelling.

The modelling tools helped to quantify information including the mass of arsenic being released and also lead to discussions on proposed engineering solutions to mitigate the problem.

Ms Wallis said factors such as the pH and oxygen concentration of the groundwater, as well as certain geological influences such as mineral occurrence and initial arsenic concentration in the rocks, were among reasons why arsenic was found in the groundwater.

She said that in Australia – where groundwater is the second most important freshwater resource – arsenic is generally not a problem however “we need to be aware that under specific circumstances arsenic can be released into groundwater and then concentrations can become elevated”.

Image courtesy of Eyre Iron Pty Ltd

Swapping their uniforms for hardhats, high school students on the Eyre Peninsula will have the chance to set up and manage their own mine as part of a mining careers road show this week.

During the 2012 Mining Careers Expo, held from March 26 to 30, Flinders University will use a video game to help students explore the myriad of career opportunities in the mining industry.

Developed by School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics lecturer Dr Brett Wilkinson, the video game will demonstrate the various skill-sets required to build and operate a mine, from hydrologists who survey the groundwater on the site to ecologists who consider the environmental impacts.

“It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book – students will have to make decisions on the mine before, during and after it’s built,” Flinders science communications officer Emma Lawrance, who will be representing Flinders at the careers expo, said.

“They’ll have the option to set up the mine straight away, and face various consequences, or undertake a survey first and if they pick that option they’ll have to bring in a range of other experts such as environmental scientists, chemists and computer engineers,” she said.

“It’s a simple outreach tool to demonstrate all the factors that need to be considered when opening a mine and the different types of skill-sets that are needed.”

Ms Lawrance said the aim of the expo, organised by the Eyre Peninsula Mining Alliance, was to show students the many different career options in the industry.

“While we obviously need people to do the construction and physical mining work, there’s so much more that goes into developing and running a mine,” Ms Lawrance said.

“There could be an endangered lizard on the site so you might need to call in a specialist in biodiversity, or there could be a native title claim on the land in which case you’d need to use geographical information systems to map out those regions.”

Ms Lawrance said the expo would also help highlight the opportunities that arise from studying at Flinders.

“It’s a great chance for Flinders to continue its involvement in regional communities but we also want to show students that if you leave your home to study here you gain lots of skills and support so you can return to your region as a leader.”

The expo will feature presentations and information booths for both schools and the general public, with industry and university representatives on hand to answer questions about the types of jobs the mining industry could bring to the Eyre Peninsula and the qualifications required.

The expo was held yesterday at Ceduna and visits Wudinna today, Cleve on March 28 and Port Lincoln on March 29 and 30.