Team
Dr Mat Vanderklift
- Dr Mat Vanderklift is a senior research scientist in CSIRO and director of the IORA Blue Carbon Hub. Mat has 25 years of experience studying coastal vegetated ecosystems, with a particular focus on understanding the factors which control plant growth, and their responses to the way that humans use them. He has worked in seagrass and other coastal ecosystems widely in the Indian Ocean, as well as in the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas. His research. includes the science of blue carbon and the relevance of policy and finance frameworks to integrate blue carbon into climate mitigation and adaptation. Mat’s role includes coordinating the activities to estimate abatement from existing and potential blue carbon methods in Australia, and participating in the research towards estimating potential abatement from seagrass restoration and critical evaluation of metrics to measure co-benefits (biodiversity, fisheries, coastal protection).
Dr Andy Steven
- Dr Andy Steven is the Leader for Strategy and Blue Growth in CSIRO’s Oceans & Atmosphere Division. He has led many significant multi –institutional projects on information systems including recently eReefs on the Great Barrier Reef Australia and the SIMA-Austral project on salmonid farming in Chile. Andy is active in policy development and Industry engagement and recently led the UN High Level Panel of Ocean Sustainability Blue paper on Coastal Development. Internationally, Andy works across the Indo-Pacific to develop the tools and capacity to enable a sustainable and equitable blue economy for the region.
Lauren Hardiman
- Lauren has experience in wetlands management, science communication, project management and has organised several high-profile workshops. Lauren has previously worked for the Queensland Department of Environment and Science managing wetlands across the state. Lauren is passionate about raising awareness of the importance of blue carbon ecosystems to enable effective management. Lauren holds a BSc (Hons) in marine biology and a MSc in aquatic biology and resource management. Lauren is the project coordinator and manages the science communication, advisory committee for the project.
Emma Westlake
- Emma Westlake is a Marine Ecologist in the Coastal Vegetation & Food Webs team, part of the Coasts and Ocean group, based at the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre in Perth, Western Australia. Emma has a multidisciplinary background and 13 years’ experience in coastal and marine ecology including tropical and temperate reef monitoring, marine protected area management, fisheries science, marine conservation, marine debris research and shark and turtle ecology (population dynamics, behaviour and movement). Emma provides assistance with data collection, the coordination of nation-wide workshops and project management.
Erin Kenna
- Erin has over 15 years of experience working in the public and private sectors in a variety of organisations and roles. Erin has a diverse technical skillset and experience in disciplines including environmental science, geospatial science, analysis, data engineering, data management and information technology. Erin brings this perspective to the projects he works on to take on multiple roles to support the collection and curation of data. Erin has experience worked on government programs assessing biodiversity and developing data and assessment frameworks to integrate environmental science into products for management, spatial planning and policy purposes.
Ray Marcos Martinez
- Ray is an expert on agricultural and land use economics with more than 15 years of experience working in projects in Mexico, Australia, China and the U.S.A. He combines state-of-the-art economics and spatial data science methods to analyse policy-relevant issues related to the sustainable management of natural resources in rural and urban areas, and from local to global scales. His research supports policy and decision makers in decoupling resource needs from economic growth, societal progress, and sustainability. His work has been published in top, policy-oriented scientific journals such as Forest Policy and Economics, Land Use Policy, Energy Policy, Marine Policy, Environmental Science and Policy, and Ecosystem Services. Ray is actively engaged in the delivery of research, reports, and industry insights to Australian Federal and State Governments, international ONGs, and industry partners. His role in the project is to coordinate the assessment of the economic viability of blue carbon offsets production in Australia.
Dan Gorman
- Daniel Gorman is a marine ecologist with a focus on blue carbon ecosystems (mangroves, saltmarsh, and seagrass) across Australia and the Indo-Pacific region. He has held research positions in Australia, France and Brazil, and employs a wide range of analytical tools (spatial ecology, stable isotopes and experimental biology) to improve our understanding of the issues affecting coastal environments. His current role in the BHP blue carbon project is twofold: 1) compiling national data on seagrass distribution to identify areas of loss and highlight opportunities for mitigation through ecological restoration; and 2) understanding the links between blue carbon ecosystems, coastal fisheries, human health and well-being. As part of a multidisciplinary team, he is helping to develop capacity and raise awareness of the ecological and societal value of these important coastal ecosystems.
Megan Saunders
- Dr Megan Saunders is an ecological modeller with expertise in coastal marine ecosystems, ecological restoration, nature-based solutions, decision science, and spatial planning in linked-land sea systems. She has a PhD in Oceanography from Dalhousie University, Canada and a BSc in Marine Biology from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Dr Saunders is the co-lead of the Australian Coastal Restoration Network and she initiated the CSIRO Southeast Queensland Community of Practice on Coastal Marine restoration and Nature-based Solutions. Dr Saunders is leading the sea-level rise work package for the BHP Coastal Carbon project, which aims to predict redistribution of coastal systems nationally in response to rising seas, as well as subsequent changes in carbon storage in those systems.
Fabio Boschetti
- Fabio is an applied mathematician with a fairly broad knowledge in different areas including numerical optimisation, signal processing and statistical analysis. As a numerical modeller Fabio has worked in several domains including physical, ecological, socio-ecological and complex systems modelling, and applies his work to the Management of Natural Resources and Decision Making. Overall, the aim of his research is to improve our understanding of how we can best model ecosystems and their interaction with human activities. Fabio states that “We know that ecological and human systems are ‘complex’; on the one hand, we need to address this complexity, accounting for multiple phenomena interacting at different scales, uncertainty, many degrees of freedom and feedback cycles obscuring causal relations. On the other hand, we need to simplify our analysis to make it manageable. Finding some sort of workable compromise is what most of my research is about.”
Dirk Slawinski
- Dirk is a data scientist who works on several projects involving coastal ocean and estuarine modelling, particle tracking of pelagic and benthic fauna, and benthic habitat modelling and estimation. On this project, Dirk manages the datasets along with others on the team. He discovers, locates and sources data that is used to inform the Blue Carbon models. Datasets acquired include bathymetry, benthic habitats, land use and tenure. Dirk is tasked to help make them interoperable. Dirk is also part of a team to develop an interactive web based data exploration and delivery tool for the project.
Alice Jones
- Alice is a marine ecologist and lecturer at the University of Adelaide (School of Biological Science and Environment Institute), where she leads the Future Coasts research lab. Alice’s research is focused on blue carbon ecosystems (seagrass, saltmarsh and mangroves) as well as modelling and managing the impacts of human activities in coastal regions. Alice has acted as an expert technical advisor for the South Australian Blue Carbon Strategy and the Australian blue carbon crediting method through tidal restoration to coastal areas. She was involved in developing the BlueCAM model, which estimates carbon abatement from carbon crediting projects that restore coastal wetlands through the reintroduction of tidal flows. Alice has strong collaborative links with scientists and policymakers in the South Australian Department for Environment and Water; a key stakeholder in the project. Her role is to help develop and parameterise carbon abatement models for different restoration activities, as well as advise on aspects of the project that are specific to South Australian blue carbon ecosystems.
Linda Thomas
- Ms Linda Thomas is a Research Technician in the Ecosystem Modelling team, part of the Marine Systems Modelling and Informatics group, based at the CSIRO Marine Laboratories in Hobart, Tasmania. Linda has 17 years’ experience in providing a broad range of technical and data assistance along with project management to projects within CSIRO. Prior to joining CSIRO in 2005, Linda spent 7 years as a Research Technician with Geoscience Australia as a marine geoscience technician and database manager. Linda will be supporting the project by providing assistance with data collection and the development and running of the sea level rise models.
Anna Lafratta
- Dr Anna Lafratta is a coastal marine ecologist that focuses her research on vegetated coastal ecosystems (VCEs; seagrasses, tidal marshes and mangroves). In 2020 she obtained her PhD at Edith Cowan University, where she is currently employed, and since then she has been working on projects related to Blue Carbon (BC) research that aim to assess the capacity of VCEs to mitigate and adapt to climate change in SE-Asia, Australia, and Europe. She is also active in the paleo-ecology research applied to VCEs to understand how those ecosystems can reveal information about coastal environmental changes overtime. Anna is currently part of the BHP BC project team, and her role is to contribute to identify, review and refine parameters for agreed components of stocks and flows in carbon accounting models.
Martin Nolan
- Martin’s background is in spatial data analysis, modelling and visualisation. He was integral in the development of CSIRO’s Land Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, a scenario modelling tool which is used to explore land-sector carbon sequestration potential, bio-energy and biodiversity benefits in cleared agricultural areas of Australia. The LUTO model has been used in CSIRO’s Australian National Outlook integrated modelling projects and most recently in modelling for Australia’s Long-term Emissions Reduction Plan. Martin will be assisting in the application of the LUTO framework in modelling coastal carbon sequestration potential.
Javier Navarro Garcia
- Javier is a Senior Research Scientist with CSIRO Agriculture and Food (A&F) and current Team Leader for the Sustainability Assessment and Metrics Team in the A&F Sustainability Program. He is a systems modeller and over the last 12 year has specialised in modelling Australian agricultural production systems in order to increase our knowledge of agricultural revenues, costs and profits, and how they relate to environmental impacts of agricultural production (e.g. mapping of GHG emissions of crop and livestock production, use of water, fertilisers and pesticides, as well as estimating pesticide toxicity to humans and ecosystems). In this project, Javier is contributing his knowledge around the spatial modelling of agricultural productivity used in the Land Use Tradeoffs model.
Professor Cath Lovelock
- Cath is an ARC Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland. She provides advice on the Tidal Restoration of Blue Carbon Ecosystems Methodology Determination 2022 of the Emissions Reduction Fund. She also contributes expertise on the impacts of sea level rise and other climate change impacts on coastal wetlands and blue carbon projects.
Valerie Hagger
- Valerie is an ecologist and research fellow at the University of Queensland (UQ) focussing on coastal ecosystem conservation and restoration. She explores drivers of mangrove conservation success and benefits of coastal wetland restoration for blue carbon and biodiversity. Her research interests include applied ecology and social-ecological systems to improve decision making in conservation and restoration interventions. Valerie also has 12 years’ experience in ecological consultancy and is a board member of the Society of Ecological Restoration Australasia (SERA) and a representative of Australia’s Restoration Decade Alliance. Her role on the project is to develop a framework to measure and verify biodiversity benefits in blue carbon protection and restoration projects. This involves reviewing approaches to measure biodiversity across Australia and internationally and assessing their potential application in coastal wetland ecosystems and engaging with stakeholders to identify the need for biodiversity certification and the characteristics required from certified biodiversity outcomes. Measurement approaches will be tested in case study mangrove and saltmarsh restoration projects and modelling of stacked species distributions will be explored to derive predicted regional benchmarks.
Justine Bell-James
- Justine is an expert in legal mechanisms for coastal protection, management and restoration. Scientists on the projects need to consider various options for blue carbon methods, Justine’s role is to assist with identifying potential legal hurdles and solutions for overcoming them.
