#unsw — Public Fediverse posts

Historical holes: Beneath the surface, caves hold the key to Australia’s wildfire history

My colleague @michcampbell recently held a postdoctoral research grant from AINSE. They've just released this 2025 Research Spotlight for early career researcher awardees all about her fire research. I think this is nicely done. If you'd like to know how caves and cave stalagmites can be used to reconstruct records of past fires, here's the article

http://andy-baker.org/2025/04/22/historical-holes-beneath-the-surface-caves-hold-the-key-to-australias-wildfire-history/

#academia #fire #caves #karst #AINSE #ANSTO #UNSW

Quaternary science in the news! Coastal peat found in southern Western Australia dated to >6 ka. Seems like a cool project involving Traditional Owners, archaeologists, and palaeoenvironmental scientists (including AQUA's president and manager of #UNSW #CHRONOS radiocarbon lab, Tim Barrows).

#AusQuaternary #palaeoenvironment #peat #Australia #WesternAustralia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2024-09-22/climate-change-wharton-beach-esperance-peat-bog/104152472

Just published in Organic Geochemistry, "Fire-induced shifts in stalagmite organic matter mapped using Synchrotron infrared microspectroscopy", led by #ANSTO colleague Dr. Liza McDonough. We demonstrate for the first time that Synchrotron IRM is a promising non-destructive, high resolution (5 µm) technique for analysing stalagmite organic matter. The paper can be found #OpenAccess here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orggeochem.2024.104842

#speleothem #stalagmite #organicMatter #pastClimate #geochemistry #UNSW

@Andbaker

The things that dissolve out of wildfire ash

A few weeks ago my colleague @michcampbell published a paper all about this. As the title states, combustion completeness and sample location determine wildfire ash leachate chemistry. So what is that chemistry? Lets start with the story of the paper. After the 2019/2020 Australian wildfires, there was a lot of wildfire ash on the landscape.

http://andy-baker.org/2024/06/04/the-things-that-dissolve-out-of-wildfire-ash/

#academia #fire #wildfire #caves #science #research #UNSW #ANSTO

Paper publication day is one of my favourite days! Our paper on wildfire ash chemistry is out today and #OpenAccess in the #AGU journal 'Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.' We analysed the inorganic and organic chemistry of wildfire (and prescribed burn) ashes from 4 karst areas in Australia and found that ash chemistry varies with burn severity and sampling location. Another team effort from #ANSTO, #UNSW, #UWA, #GNSScience colleagues (👋 @Andbaker )

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GC011470

@paleofire

If you are interested in the chemical tracers of wildfires, and how those might vary with burn severity, check out our new #preprint https://www.authorea.com/doi/full/10.22541/au.170689252.26414470/v1

We leached wildfire ashes and soils from karst areas, so we can better understand the speleothem palaeofire proxy signal. Another team effort, with co-authors from #UNSW (👋 @Andbaker) #ANSTO, #UWA, and #GNSScience

#palaeofire #paleofire #processUnderstanding #Proxy #proxies #paleoenvironment

Thank you to Bernadette Zanet and her team at Yarrangobilly Caves for supporting another fruitful research visit this week.

UNSW alumnus and data analyst Rebecca Chapman returned to explain all about her research on the hydrology at the Harrie Wood Cave. Her novel application of a statistical method called 'functional data analysis' has been submitted for publication, and there is a pre-print available here:
https://lnkd.in/gX6iSGz9

We welcome all comments and feedback.

I had the opportunity to download the latest hydrology data from the caves, now a 12-year record of water movement from the surface to the groundwater. And also help out with some questions on cave climate monitoring. And catch some wonderful views.

The pre-print is "Spatiotemporal Variation in Cave Percolation Waters: A Functional Approach" with co-authors Shawn Laffan (UNSW), Monika Markowska (MPIC) and Liza McDonough (ANSTO) and is another collaboration between UNSW and ANSTO.

#research #water #research #science #groundwater #statistics #caves #climate #rain #hydrology #datascience #UNSW #ANSTO

Over the last few years, we (Pauline Treble, @michcampbell, Liza McDonough, @unsw and ANSTO) have been establishing a new methodology to obtain records of fire history. It uses cave stalagmites as the archive of past fires, a novel approach for cave science and fire research communities.

Why use cave stalagmites to record fire history? They can contain exceptionally long and continuous annual laminae that allow us to count back in time very precisely. And this allows the precise determination of fire frequency in the past, which is measured using high-resolution geochemical techniques such as laser ablation mass spectrometry and synchrotron elemental mapping.

Next week, Liza, Micha and Pauline present our most recent results at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna. If you are interested, the abstracts are accessible to everyone using the links below.

EGU23-11016
Speleothems as archives for palaeofire proxies by Micheline Campbell et al.
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU23/EGU23-11016.html

EGU23-2932
Hydrological conceptual model for reconstructing fire history from cave stalagmites by Pauline Treble et al.
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU23/EGU23-2932.html

EGU23-10651
An annually resolved stalagmite record of fire frequency for the last 250 years in south west Australia by Liza McDonough et al.
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU23/EGU23-10651.html

#research #academia #science #caves #fire #wildfire #scicomm #environment #geology #UNSW #ANSTO #egu23 @EuroGeosciences

Are you interested in fire history, and novel methods for obtaining records of past fires.

At the EGU General Assembly in April 2023, please consider attending the session "Novel proxies for understanding past fires: outcomes for land and ecosystem management".

My colleague @michcampbell is co-convening and she'd love to see you there!

EGU23 will be fully hybrid, and she welcomes submissions from online attendants.

https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU23/session/45519

#academia #research #fire #climate #wildfire #EGU23 #UNSW #ANSTO #conference

Next week we have a poster of our latest research at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (#AGU22).

What are we presenting about? Our use of stalagmites as archives of past fires

Why use stalagmites? They have a very high resolution, meaning that we can count annual growth layers and identify the frequency of fires in the past.

How do we do it? We detect the ash-derived elements that are transported from the surface to the cave in drip waters

And the poster? Is about how the oxygen and carbon isotope composition of stalagmites is also affected by fires

For anyone interested, here's the session details:

Quantifying the fire imprint in speleothem oxygen and carbon isotope records
Final Paper Number: PP25C-0894
Tuesday, December 13th; 2:45 PM - 6:15 PM (Chicago time)
Location:  online iPoster  and Zoom link

There's a copy of the poster below.

#fire #stalagmites #caves #science #environment #earthscience #academia #unsw #ansto