Publications database

Weather systems in the southern Indian Ocean influence East Antarctic precipitation variability and surface mass balance. However…

Mosses play a key role in Antarctic ecosystems. Understanding of moss diversity and its likely drivers across Antarctica is, however, limited, as is the extent to which Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs) represent this diversity.

Ecosystem models are often used to predict the consequences of management interventions in applied ecology and conservation. These models are often high-dimensional and nonlinear, yet limited data are available to calibrate or validate them. Consequently…

The Antarctic vortex of October–December 2020 was the strongest on record in the satellite era for the season in the mid- to lower stratosphere. However, it was poorly predicted by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's operational seasonal climate forecast system of that time, ACCESS-S1…

Accelerated warming since the 1950s has caused dramatic change to ice shelves and outlet glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula. Long observational records of ice loss in Antarctica are rare but essential to accurately inform mass balance estimates of glaciers. Here…

Recent studies have revealed the presence of a complex freshwater system underlying the Aurora Subglacial Basin (ASB), a region of East Antarctica that contains ?7 m of global sea level potential in ice mainly grounded below sea level. However…

Cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) play a fundamental role in determining the microphysical properties of low-level clouds that are crucial for defining the energy budget over the Southern Ocean (SO). However, many aspects of the CCN budget over the SO remains poorly understood…

Iron plays a pivotal role in regulating ocean primary productivity. Iron is supplied from diverse sources such as the atmosphere and the geosphere, and hence iron biogeochemical research has focused on identifying and quantifying such sources of "new" iron. However…

The passive sinking flux of particles, termed the biological gravitational pump (BGP), is an important component of the ocean's biological carbon pump. In addition, carbon-rich particles are actively injected to depth through the diel vertical migration (DVM)…

Genomic adaptation and introgression can occur during the speciation process, enabling species to diverge in their frequencies of adaptive alleles or acquire new alleles that may promote adaptation to environmental changes.

Coupled ice sheet–ocean models are increasingly being developed and applied to important questions pertaining to processes at the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheet margins, which play a pivotal role in ice sheet stability and sea level rise projections.

As whales recover from commercial exploitation, they are increasing in abundance in habitats that they have been absent from for decades. However, studying the recovery and habitat use patterns of whales, particularly in remote and inaccessible regions…

Vertical migrations by marine organisms contribute to carbon export by consumption of surface … phytoplankton followed by defecation in the deep ocean. However, biogeochemical models lack … observational data, leading to oversimplified representation of carbon cycling by migrating organisms…

A southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) was found dead, stranded on a remote rock platform at Torndirrup, Western Australia, on 20 September 2022.

Blue whales Balaenoptera musculus at South Georgia were heavily exploited during 20th century industrial whaling, to the point of local near-extirpation. Although legal whaling for blue whales ceased in the 1960s…

Southern hemisphere humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae, SHHW) breeding populations follow a high-fidelity Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) diet while feeding in distinct sectors of the Southern Ocean.

Identification of species' Biologically Important Areas (BIAs) is fundamental to conservation planning and species distribution models (SDMs) are a powerful tool commonly used to do this.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a commonly used management tool to safeguard marine life from anthropogenic impacts, yet their efficacy often remains untested.

The distribution of New Zealand sea lions is typically localised to New Zealand and its remote subantarctic islands. However, non-resident male sea lions were seen on Macquarie Island, 650 km from their nearest natal islands, in all months of all years from 1965 to 1980.

The globally significant communities of terrestrial Antarctica face an uncertain future amid growing threats in the region. Emerging data-driven approaches must be leveraged to predict and understand patterns of biodiversity across the continent.

Background … The Antarctic is an extreme environment for plants. Several invasive plant species, however, have invaded the sub-Antarctic Southern Ocean islands and increasingly threaten the vulnerability of maritime and continental Antarctica, particularly with changes in climate.

Executive Summary: This Report summarises the outcomes of a Workshop on the topic of climate tipping points. While it contains a limited number of key references and points from the wider literature…

Since 2001, hundreds of thousands of hours of underwater acoustic recordings have been made throughout the Southern Ocean south of 60° S. Detailed analysis of the occurrence of marine mammal sounds in these circumpolar recordings could provide novel insights into their ecology…

There is growing interest from research and conservation groups in the potential for using small unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs; <2 kg) to conduct wildlife surveys because they are affordable, easy to use, readily available and reliable. However, limitations such as short flight endurance…

Under the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, 196 Parties committed to reporting the status of genetic diversity for all species. To facilitate reporting, three genetic diversity indicators were developed…