Wiinya Environmental Research Group

Our lab is dedicated to palaeoecological and biogeographic research, developing and integrating high-resolution palaeoenvironmental records from across the Southern Hemisphere.

Primarily in Australia, we use multiple proxies to provide comprehensive reconstructions of environmental change over time. Integral to our laboratory and research is working and developing research projects with Traditional Owners, who are striving to engage with and return health to their Country.

Key areas of research include

How Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders – Australia’s First Peoples – have used fire to manage, manipulate and create Australian vegetation landscapes since arriving more than 68,000 years ago;
How fuel loads, fuel type, fire frequency and fire intensity have changed across Australia during the transition from Indigenous to British management over the past 500 years;
Meaningfully incorporating Indigenous knowledge into landscape management to tackle many of the environmental challenges we face today (restoration and management guidelines);
Historic vegetation, fire, and hydrological fluctuations across landscapes;
Response, resilience and recovery of endangered ecologies and ecosystems.

We are based in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The University of Melbourne. Our research is undertaken using various techniques including the collection, analysis and synthesis of paleoenvironmental data (employing the multi-proxy approach), primarily from sediment cores from wetlands, but also includes tree rings and speleothems. The main proxy indicators we work with are pollen (for vegetation reconstructions) and charcoal (for insights into fire activity). With our numerous collaborations with researchers and laboratories in Australia and worldwide, we also employ geochemical, isotopic and sedimentological proxies to assist in answering fundamental questions concerning the Earth system and the role of humans within it. We work closely with Traditional Owners to develop research projects that are led by their aspirations for Country and are designed to serve the purpose of returning health to Australian environments, to Country.