2021 Publications Performance
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Mean Field Weighted Citation Impact of Monash Outputs: 1.54
Number of Monash Research Outputs: 47
Coastal Research Group
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Coastal habitats play a vital role in mitigating the effects of sea level rise, through increasing sediment accretion rates and thus surface elevation. Monash's Coastal Research Group is based at the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment and seeks to understand how marine and coastal vegetated habitats function and how they are impacted by natural disturbance, anthropogenic impacts, and climate change. The group's research themes including coastal dynamics, ecology and biogeography using a combination of field studies, remote sensing, laboratory analyses, and numerical modelling. The insights gained from research provide important guidance for the effective management of these habitats into the future.
Ecology and Conservation Group
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Ecology and Conservation is one of key research areas within the Monash School of Biological Sciences. Working across freshwater, marine and terrestrial environments, from the tropics to the Antarctic, and in state-of-the-art laboratory settings, researchers are working to understand ecological processes, and the consequences of environmental change for species and the ecosystems they occupy. The work contributes to the fields of fundamental ecology and environmental science, while also promoting evidence-based conservation management and policy decisions to secure biodiversity and limit disruptions to human society.
Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future
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Monash-led program, Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), is an Antarctic research program, funded by the Australian Research Council as a Special Research Initiative. Established in 2021, its mission is to understand the changes taking place across the Antarctic region – to its climate and its biodiversity – and develop innovative ways to forecast, mitigate and manage these changes. SAEF also seeks to collaborate with policymakers to identify conservation priorities and help make the right decisions for Antarctica’s future. The initiative is funded for seven years, to ambitiously push to protect the future of Antarctica, and the planet.
Unit statistics and highlights
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In 2021, 98 units directly related to SDG14 were offered across Monash University, with a total enrolment of 4,992 students.
The units highlighted below are a small sample of the units at Monash relating to life below water:
Monash Lens: Ocean plastic pollution
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Researchers from across Monash are tackling plastic pollution in the ocean from different perspectives. This Monash Lens collection is bringing a sharp focus to this work through articles and podcasts. Content includes discussion and analysis around global waste; the need to change the conversation on plastic; Australia's banning of 'biodegradable' plastic; the need for a global plastic treaty; rethinking plastic to change the system; how to change our relationship with plastic; and a mission to make plastic fantastic.
Students invent plastic debris capturing device
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Understanding that every single person has to play a part in protecting the planet, year-one students from the School of Engineering, Monash University Malaysia, designed a parabolic floater to collect floating plastic debris on the surface of oceans and rivers, inspired by Dutch inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat's invention and buildings designed to withstand tornadoes. The students kickstarted this project under the Leadership and Innovation unit, offered under Common Engineering for first-year engineering students. In this project, the students demonstrated the ability to benchmark for solutions in domains that are beyond the existing plastic debris solutions. Cleaning up plastic waste in the oceans and rivers is incredibly costly. With this in mind, the team designed the Ocean Parabolic Cleaner using significantly less expensive materials hoping that the design could be scaled to a much larger size to suit the demands of plastic debris retention.
