SARCCM Research Themes

Program 1: Coastal Oceanography

Program Leader: Prof. Xiao Hua Wang
Prof. Peter Steinberg, Prof. Emma Johnston, Prof. Moninya Roughan, A/Prof Barbara Robson, A/Prof. Erick Fredj, Dr Andrew Kiss, Mr Chris Lane, Ms Zhibing Li, Mr Guan Dong Gao, Ms Amanda Xiao, Ms Zhixin Cheng, Mr Fanglou Liao, Prof. Charles Lemckert

Objectives:

• To develop and apply hydrodynamics and sediment transport models in estuaries, ports, and turbid coastal environments;
• To explore the structure, function, dynamics and interactions of marine ecosystems and their relationships with common environmental stressors within estuarine and coastal waters;
• To develop regional coastal ocean observing and forecasting system.

Program 2: Coastal and marine natural resource management, people, policy, practice

Program Leader: A/Prof. Stuart Pearson
MA Yingjie, SONG N’iger, A/Prof. Stuart Pearson, Dr Jo Banks, Dr David Leary, Mrs Amanda Putri, Mr Saiful Marbun, Dr Shengnan Chen, Ms Bo Dong, Mr Maozeng Jiang

Objectives:

• Fostering excellence in comparative research on natural resource management in China, Australia and with other international partners.
• Sharing of research knowledge and development of new insights and capacity to contribute to marine and coastal natural resource management.

Program 3: Remote sensing/GIS

Program Leader: A/Prof. Yue Ma
Prof. Linlin Ge, A/Prof. Xiuping Jia, Dr Zhi Huang, Dr Chunhui Zhou, Dr Qianguo Xing, Mr Haifeng Zhang, Miss Meng Xu

Objectives:

In this task, we will examine and assess to which extent the routine measurements from spaceborne sensors are combined and used together with model-based forecasting systems. The outcome shall form the basis of a series of recommendations concerning bridging the gap of Chinese/Australian capacity for utilizing spaceborne measurements in the framework of an operational ocean forecasting system.

Description:

• Collect the data from current satellites and the information of future satellites which will be launched in the near future for coastal ocean observation (SST, wind, waves, sea ice, ocean colour and surface current).
• Investigate multi-temporal data processing techniques for retrieving the ocean environmental parameters as a time series to match the goals of ocean applications in the China Seas and Australia waters. Develop cloud removal techniques to generate frequent optical images.
• Investigate data fusion approach to integrate big data including multi/hyperspectral, SAR, and LiDAR from both optical and microwave sensors.
• Collect remote sensed and field data for ground truthing and validation.

Building Resilience of Coastal Communities project

Program Leaders: Prof Xiao Hua Wang (Science), A/Prof Minako Sakai (Social science) and A/Prof Jianfeng Xue (Engineering)

This project aims to build a network/consortium of Australian-international academics and stakeholders to exchange knowledge and ideas to build coastal resilience in the Indo-Pacific. In this project, we conduct inter-disciplinary research such as community disaster relief and resilience building against coastal hazards and climate change (sea level rise, land subsidence, coastal erosion, flooding etc.).  The green energy transition to reduce CO2 emissions necessitates the mining of critical minerals and causes environmental destruction and risks livelihood losses in the downstream community. This project runs in partnership with HASS, Science, Business and Engineering at UNSW Canberra.  https://youtu.be/GkHmusXqHYU