The WERG are an interdisciplinary group of hydrological, ecological, social and geomorphological researchers, with strong links to Melbourne Water through the Melbourne Waterway Research Practice Partnership (mwrpp.org). We offer a stimulating, collegiate environment for students interested in applied research in river science, with strong links to management practice.
Current PhD opportunities:
• Improving stream management using DNA barcodes and ecological modelling.
• Can real-time control technology deliver environmental flows to protect urban streams?
• Investigating the effects of river flow regime on plant reproduction and recruitment
More details below
Improving stream management using DNA barcodes and ecological modelling.
Are you interested in PhD research with the potential to discover new species? Do you want to help strategically protect biodiversity and monitor the health of Melbourne’s waterways? Do you want to gain skills in fieldwork, molecular methods, spatial and ecological modelling and industry-focused research engagement and translation?
‘Improving stream management using DNA barcodes and ecological modelling’ is an exciting, University of Melbourne-Melbourne Water collaborative ARC Linkage project with direct management impact. We seek a Phd candidate to join our multidisciplinary team to work on bringing together DNA barcoding and metabarcoding of freshwater macroinvertebrates with spatially-explicit modelling.
The project will provide macroinvertebrate species data, methods and tools for Melbourne Water to better understand and monitor freshwater biodiversity patterns across Melbourne and improve capacity to plan, prioritise and evaluate management actions for improved stream health (extended project description below). The Phd project will involve a program of fieldwork, molecular methods (e.g. DNA barcoding, metabarcoding and DNA-based bioinformatic analyses) and spatial and ecological modelling (e.g. GIS, species distribution modelling, scenario analyses, spatial conservation prioritisation).
The project team consists of A/Prof Chris Walsh, Prof Ary Hoffmann, Dr Yung En Chee, Dr Rhys Coleman, Dr Melissa Carew and Genevieve Hehir.
Can real-time control technology deliver environmental flows to protect urban streams?
This project, funded by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Program, in conjunction with Melbourne Water, South East Water and Yarra Ranges Council, will test whether a network of real-time controlled (RTC) rainwater tanks (“smart tanks”) on public and private land, and on large water storages, can return a more natural flow regime to Monbulk Creek (in Victoria, Australia), with the aim of improving the health of the stream ecosystem, and improving the foraging habitat of a population of platypus. The PhD topic – Assessing the impacts on stream hydrology and hydraulics – will use flow measurements in the stormwater and stream network, to investigate how the real-time controlled network of water storages affects the stream flow regime, and how that translates into the hydraulic environment.
More details on this PhD, as well as application details can be downloaded here..
