February news items

14th February - Field team at Lower Lakes, South Australia

A team of Southern Cross GeoScience researchers and technical staff are currently visiting the River Murray Lower Lakes: Albert and Alexandrina. The team are collecting soil and water samples to examine sulfate reduction and the generation of alkalinity, which has occurred as a consequence of the bioremediation trials implemented by the SA Dept of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The trip is the last of four trips to the Lower Lakes for the team, consisting of Prof. Leigh Sullivan, Assoc. Prof. Ed Burton, Paul Cheeseman and Trent McIntyre, who have seen some amazing changes during that time. On this final occasion, waist deep water levels made the sampling process more challenging than usual. This is vastly different scenario to the dried lake beds which greeted them in early 2010.

During the visit the team was also filmed for an upcoming DVD on the research capabilities of Southern Cross University.

21st February - Dr Peter Kraal joins the GeoScience team

Dr Peter Kraal has joined Southern Cross GeoScience to work on a 3 year Post Doctoral ARC Linkage Project, investigating extreme geochemical environments that form in the Peel Harvey estuary, south of Perth. Peter has recently completed his PhD on "Redox-dependent phosphorus burial in modern and ancient marine sediments" at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. Peter moved to Australia, and joined GeoScience after seeing the position advertised at the 2010 Goldschmidt conference. Apparently the ad made mention of Lismore's pleasant sub-tropical climate and close proximity to some of the best beaches and surfing spots in the world, which quickly grabbed Peter's attention!

Updated: 12 March 2012