My primary research focus is the drivers of environmental and climate change in south-east Queensland by examining lake sediment records and water quality studies from K'gari (formerly known as Fraser Island) and North Stradbroke Island/Minjerribah.  Other work, including that of PhD students, without whom most of this would not be possible, is described below.  This work is focussed on ensuring that environmental policy is formulated with a strong evidence base.

My K'gari research is undertaken as part of a research consortium made up of members of the Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation, Burnett Mary Regional Group, CSIRO and I.  The consortium has been doing regular water quality sampling of ~10 K'gari lakes, obtaining lake volumes from bathymetric surveys and coring the lakes to obtain sediment "records".   Some of this work is discussed in an article in The Conversation.

The North Stradbroke Island research was supported by ARC Linkage project (LP0990124) and ARC Discovery projects (DP150103875 & DP190102782).  The main aims of this work were to i) understand the Holocene climate history of south-east Queensland and ii) understand the long-term environmental in the region. In relation to ii) PhD student Haidee Cadd developed ~100,000-year long climate records that are independent of changes in catchment hydrology.  These will be compared to pollen-based records of vegetation change and Sporomiella as a record of the presence of megaherbivores.

A number of publications have emerged from the North Stradbroke Island work with highlights including a record of past rainfall covering the last 7,500 years (Barr et al. 2019) and long records of environmental change developed by PhD students from i) Welsby Lagoon (Cadd et al. 2018): ii) Fern Gully Lagoon (Kemp et al. 2021) and iii) Brown Lake (Lewis et al. 2021).  This work would not have been possible without the collaboration with colleagues from Queensland Government.  

My other projects include:

Analysis of diatoms in South Australian streams, to assist in improving water quality guidelines.  The project is in collaboration with the Environment Protection Authority (SA) and mostly involves sampling using rope as an artificial substrate (Richards et al. 2020).  Together with the EPA we have been using experimental streams to assess the affect of salinity, shade and sediment on diatom communities (Tibby et al. 2020; Frost et al. 2023, Frost et al. 2024). Our work indicates that stricter salinity and sediment deposition guidelines are needed. 

The environmental history of the lower Murray River lakes (Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert) and The Coorong (e.g. Tibby et al. 2022). This work focuses on understanding the natural salinity regime of these internationally significant wetlands.  This work is in the context of environmental water allocations that provide water to the lower lakes to maintain them as fresh. Our work, which combines analysis of diatoms preserved in the sediments with hyrdological modelling shows that the lakes have been predominantly fresh through most of their history.  Our ongoing work from Lake Alexandrina aims to infer the natural flow history of the River Murray.

Understanding the history of New Zealand's lakes as a part of the Lakes 380 project. This massive project has analysed the sediment record from 380 New Zealand lakes. My involvement is mostly via PhD student Dr Julia Short who published a paper on the history of Lake Oporoa in the southern North Island and how the sediment record can be used in conjunction with the local iwi desires to guide culturally acceptable restoration (Short et al. 2022).  

Analysis of diatom-water quality relationships on Cape York Peninsula for the Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts (Qld). This project aims to better understand the influence of water quality on the biota in springs on Cape York. This will ultimately contribute to water resource planning on The Cape.

The investigation of rates of sedimentation in waterholes in the Moonie River (south-west Queensland) and the environmental history of Burdekin River wetlands. These projects are funded by, and conducted in collaboration with, Queensland's Department of Science and Environment.

The environmental history of western Victorian lakes (in particular Lake Surprise and Tower Hill) in collaboration with Cameron Barr, Jonathan Tyler, Chris Turney, Peter Kershaw and many others. PhD student Georgina Falster had published a study on the climate history of the late glacial (30,000-10,000 years ago), see Barr et al. (2024) and Falster et al. (2018) in publications.

Consulting and contract research

My colleagues and I have undertaken a wide variety of consultancy projects for clients in most Australian states. These have mainly focused on the effect of mine drainage and waste water discharge on stream algal communities.  We commonly utilise the Diatom index for bioassesment of Australian rivers (Chessman et al. 2007) as tool. Please contact me for pricing.