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The Anthropocene: Where on Earth are we Going?

Online , Australia

The current trajectory of the Earth System is a rapid exit from the Holocene, accelerating towards a much hotter climate system and a degraded, ill-functioning biosphere.

STEM and Society: SealSpotters

Dr Rebecca McIntosh Mr Ross Holmberg Join Dr Rebecca McIntosh and Ross Holmberg from the Phillip Island Nature Parks team as they prepare to launch the annual SealSpotter Challenge, when citizen scientists around the globe jump online to count Australian fur seals and contribute to vital conservation research. The SealSpotter program allows anyone with a computer to help with the management and protection of our oceans by counting seals in images captured with a UAV drone. The count enables scientists to…

Why the World Needs Ecologists

  We are drowning in bad news. Two pages into the (1000pg) United Nations Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and you’ll be pleading for Tolstoy. Even David Attenborough is depressing these days. Ecosystems collapse and species loss is being documented across the planet, with profound existential ramifications. Habitat degradation and loss remains the…

Next-Gen Spatial Tech for Forest Management

  New spatial technologies - like remote sensing, global positioning systems, ground based sensors, monitoring and other ICT interventions - are set to revolutionise our understanding of our forests and improve our capacity to manage and sustain them. Join three proponents of these powerful new systems for environmental monitoring to learn more about their potential…

Location, Location, Location: Immune Protection by Tissue-Resident T-Cells

Online , Australia

T cells are specialised immune cells that are central to the complex, adaptive immune response to infection and disease. T cells are “trained” to recognise specific fragments or components of viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens (e.g. a component of the influenza virus or tuberculosis bacterium). During an infection, those T cells that recognise the infectious…

Liveable Cities for All: Are We There Yet?

Our definition of "liveability" is important if we are serious about cities that facilitate healthy and sustainable lifestyles that support both individual and planetary health.

STEM and Society: The Anthropocene

  Human pressures on the planet as a whole – the ‘Earth System’ – have now become so great that scientists have proposed that we have now left the Holocene, the geologic epoch that has been humanity’s accommodating home for the last 11,700 years. It’s proposed we’ve entered a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, characterised…

Coastal Resilience: How Landforms Cope with Changing Waves and Rising Seas

Royal Society of Victoria 8 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Vic, Australia

The 2021 Howitt Lecture Presented in partnership with the Geological Society of Australia (Victoria Division). Our coast is a dynamic system. As the protective boundary between the land and sea it absorbs the constant energy it receives from waves and tides and in doing so creates the landforms on which people recreate and build. The…

Decarbonising Energy: At the Tipping Point

Online , Australia

Australia has the highest per-capita greenhouse emissions of any advanced economy, we’re on track to miss our Paris commitment, and we're nowhere near achieving net zero.

STEM and Society: A Hard-Won Theory – Tectonic Plates in Victoria

Online , Australia

It can be confusing when we hear from scientists reluctant to deal in absolutes, who instead engage in conversations about ‘degrees of certainty’. In the world of science, a ‘theory’ is the closest something may ever come to being ‘the truth’. To understand what modern scientists can go through to arrive at an accepted theory, we’re taking a look at one of the major revelations of the past century: the theory of tectonic plates.

Indigenous Food and Agriculture

Online , Australia

Come yarn about native foods, healthy eating and Australian Indigenous farmers.

Free
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