SCU at the cutting edge

Southern Cross University GeoScience co-director Richard Bush, Minister for Energy and Resources Martin Ferguson and Page MP Janelle Saffin.

In terms of climate change, Federal Minister for Energy and Resources Martin Ferguson believes “technology created the problem and technology will be the solution” – and Southern Cross University is at the cutting edge of finding those answers.

The Minister was in Lismore on Tuesday with Page MP Janelle Saffin to officially open Southern Cross GeoScience – a multi-million dollar facility allowing scientists to tackle some the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

Scientists will be looking at innovative solutions to land and water degradation issues in Australia and overseas, and already Southern Cross GeoScience has made a world-first discovery in carbon sequestration, identifying plants that have the ability to take up carbon from the atmosphere and safely lock it up in the soil for thousands of years.

“We have also developed an efficient and low-cost technique to accurately quantify the amount of carbon stored by this process, attracting considerable international interest,” GeoScience co-director Professor Leigh Sullivan said. “This will be an extremely valuable tool in any carbon credit schemes which are introduced in Australia and overseas.”

Fellow director Professor Richard Bush said the facility is currently working on some major research projects – how to protect the Murray-Darling Basin from the impacts of acidification, how to rehabilitate wetlands rights across the country, and how to protect estuaries from urban development and agricultural run-off.

Southern Cross GeoScience is also looking at the impacts of climate change and sea-level rise.

“It’s one of our most important projects because the implications of sea-level rise are so broad and the magnitude of change that could take place, and the fact that so many people live along the coastline,” he said. “These environments are so important to society as places people live and grow food, and the work we’re doing is quite unique. We have a group of experts working with others around the world to improve and manage water quality should sea water impact and intrude in these areas. We’re doing really fundamental research and we see our role as providing new technology to address to real-world problems. We’re coming up with models and systems to better manage groundwater and surface water dynamics, and that could be applied universally.”

Minister Ferguson said international research partnerships with neighbouring developing nations were also being developed.

“Predicting arsenic contamination of shallow groundwater in developing nations is a major international issue and I note the centre is currently exploring research partnerships in Vietnam on this issue,” he said. “Globally, the health of over a billion people is compromised by polluted air, water or soil and the World Health Organisation estimates that one in four of all deaths in the developing world are directly attributable to environmental factors. So this is very necessary work.”