2009 Annual MTSRF Conference
[30 March 2009] Hundreds of questions about the Great Barrier Reef, the Wet Tropics and the Torres Strait will be answered in April when some of the findings of more than sixty scientific studies will be presented by the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility. The 2009 Annual MTSRF Conference, organised by the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, will be held from 28-30 April at Rydges Southbank, Townsville. [pdf 98.7 kb]
Corals battling since Cook
[24 April 2009] New research to be announced at the 2009 Annual MTSRF Conference has indicated that the corals of the Great Barrier Reef became affected by human activity as soon as the adjacent coast became settled by Europeans. University of Queensland researcher Professor John Pandolfi has looked back in time to consider the effects of human activity on coral reefs since the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1770. [pdf 93.5 kb]
Impacts of Climate Change on Green Sea Turtles
[30 March 2009] Climate change will cause additional pressure on already threatened sea turtle populations by skewing their sex ratio towards female, reducing available nesting space and altering their exposure to cyclones, according to new research results to be announced at the 2009 Annual Conference of the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility. [pdf 157.2 kb]
Improving rainforest revegetation outcomes
[24 April 2009] A free toolkit designed to assist rainforest revegetation projects will be launched at the 2009 Annual MTSRF Conference in Townsville on 28 April. Researchers funded by the MTSRF recently found that decades of tree-planting effort in cleared areas of rainforest may not have produced the desired outcome. [pdf 157.2 kb]
Knowledge is profit: Informed farmers make more money
[20 April 2009] Sir Francis Bacon famously wrote that 'Knowledge is power'. Now the results of a study of landholders on the Atherton Tablelands of North Queensland show that knowledge is also profit - informed farmers tend to make more money. The survey of rural landholders demonstrated that those who actively sought information about how to best manage their properties and businesses were more likely to be profitable than others. [pdf 99.1 kb]
Planting for regrowth
[24 April 2009] Not all tree plantings are the same and researchers have today announced the best methods for particular outcomes at the 2009 Annual Conference of the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility. Griffith University Associate Professor Carla Catterall is the leader of the team of researchers who have studied the topic 'Reforesting the landscape for biodiversity and carbon: Varied outcomes under different approaches'. [pdf 118.4 kb]
Sharks held live-aboard dive boats rake in tourism dollars
[24 April 2009] The live-aboard dive boat industry in Cairns and Port Douglas is worth at least $16 million per annum to the region, according to scientific research results that will be announced at the 2009 Annual Conference of the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility. The results also show that live-aboard divers travelling to Osprey Reef valued shark sightings more highly than sightings of other wildlife. [pdf 116.1 kb]
Tania Major presents Essential Science for North Queenslanders
[22 April 2009] North Queenslander and former Young Australian of the Year, Tania Major, will be presenting information that all North Queenslanders need to know at a series of engaging Essential Science Sessions to be held in Cairns and Townsville in May. Tania will attend the third Annual Conference of the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF) in Townsville in April to extract the most interesting and useful of the MTSRF scientific results and summarising them into a one-hour session aimed at the general public. [pdf 146.7 kb]
