Microbial communities in the Coorong - Uni of Adelaide
Channel: Faculty of Sciences, Engineering & Technology
Date: 2021-10-27

Climate change has cast a shadow on the future of river basins and their estuaries worldwide, with projections of reduced rainfall in many of these regions. In degraded coastal ecosystems, there is a lack of understanding of the broad ecosystem processes mediated by microbial activity, which is critical to solving current and future environmental issues.

'Hypersaline' environments, such as the Coorong (at the estuary of the Murray-Darling Basin, South Australia), have a salt concentration well above seawater and are among the least well characterised natural ecosystems on Earth.

This project aims to understand the roles of the microbial community in response to salty conditions in the Coorong by asking 3 broad questions: Who's there? What are they doing? How does it relate to ecosystem processes? The answers to these questions will help navigate a path to restoration of the Coorong's unique ecological character through better informed management.

https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/christopher.keneally