Environmental Futures Seminar - Dr Jeff Kelleway

Australia’s estuaries support ecosystems exhibiting a diversity of vegetation structures and biogeochemical conditions. Of these, supratidal forested wetlands dominated by the genera Melaleuca and Casuarina (SFWs) have broad geographic distributions across tropical, sub-tropical and temperate coastlines. There is growing interest in understanding supratidal function ecosystem functions, vulnerability to climate change, and their potential for inclusion in coastal management strategies. Our research has enabled the first continental-scale estimates of carbon stocks for supratidal forests, spanning Australia’s temperate coasts. Our findings show that supratidal forests are carbon-rich ecosystems which support carbon stocks and belowground preservation within the range of or greater than adjacent, traditional blue carbon ecosystems (mangrove and saltmarsh). The capacity of these supratidal forests to accumulate and store carbon while emitting minimal soil methane appears to be controlled, at least in part, by inundation and salinity regimes in the coastal zone. These findings support the inclusion of supratidal forests in blue carbon policy, accounting frameworks, restoration activities and research endeavours.

About the speaker

Dr Jeff Kelleway is a Senior Research Fellow in the Environmental Futures Research Centre at the University of Wollongong. He specialises in the response of coastal wetlands to environmental change and their potential role in climate change mitigation. This research brings together elements of ecology, geomorphology and biogeochemistry, with Dr. Kelleway and his group working in diverse settings across Australia’s coastlines. Dr. Kelleway received his PhD from the University of Technology Sydney and has previously been a Research Fellow at Macquarie University and worked as an Environmental Scientist in the NSW government and private industry.