Five million shorebirds migrate between Australia and the northern hemisphere, threatened by habitat destruction, and rising seas. How can we protect this natural marvel?
Hefty problem: a local council was left with a huge clean-up bill after a dead whale washed up in Perth last year.
AAP Image/City of Stirling
Dead whales can cost beachside ratepayers a lot to clean up. The alternative is to tow them away before they wash up - but the legal question of who does the job is far more complex than it sounds.
Apollo Bay in Victoria. Australia’s coastal towns are vulnerable to changes in the surrounding seas.
ccdoh1/Flickr
Australia’s coastal towns, many built around fisheries and tourism, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. South east and south west Australia are marine hotspots — they are warming much faster…
A king tide in New Zealand, part of a project documenting what future sea level rise might look like.
Witness King Tides/Flickr
Human activity is driving sea levels higher. Australia’s seas are likely to rise by around 70 centimetres by 2100 if nothing is done to combat climate change. But 2100 can seem a long way off. At the moment…
Swings and roundabouts: sea level rises are hard to predict.
Danny Lawson/PA
Coastal and river flooding struck Britain again this week with huge waves hitting southern and western coasts and around 100 flood warnings still in place by Wednesday evening. Disturbing but, sadly, not…
Double jet lag? No thanks.
Dr D Wilcockson, IBERS, Aberystwyth University
You get hauled out of bed in the morning not just because of an alarm clock. We are genetically encoded with a 24-hour (circadian) body clock that allows us to live in harmony with our environment. But…
Coastal Australia: many different activities, many different kinds of coasts.
Port Botany image sourced from Google Maps
Most of Australia’s population and infrastructure are on the coast. Continuing development pressure, global environmental threats and climate change are increasing the risk to the integrity of the coast…
The Queensland government has weakened environmental regulations to get more development along the coast.
John Harvey
The Newman-led Liberal-National Party (LNP) government in Queensland is aiming to boost economic growth by focusing on development in four areas; agriculture, tourism, mining and residential/commercial/industrial…
Coral bleaching is a serious issue, but we’re learning how reefs can best recover.
AFP/Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
Coral reefs around the world are under pressure from multiple threats. A burgeoning gas industry – such as that near Gladstone – is one of the newest of these. Pollution, sedimentation, declining water…