Expert Details
How will climate change affect our marine life? Ask a leading expert about your area.
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Name: Dr David Rissik |
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Description:
| David is an expert in marine, estuarine, wetland and freshwater systems, and has over 16 years experience in the field. He is Chief Scientist at the EPA’s Freshwater and Marine Sciences Division and Adjunct Ass. Professor at Griffiths University. He is also Vice President of the Society of Wetlands Scientists (Australasian Chapter) and a Council Member of the Australian Marine Sciences Association. |  |
Society of Wetlands Scientists
| Questions and Answers |
Question Posted By: Lee Thompson |
| Qn: I am really concerned about council beach cleaning with tractors - from clean-ups on beaches we are noticing that the tractors seem to just bury huge amounts of plastic at either end of the beach (where they turn around) and that lots is left behind despite the neat appearance of a beach looking as though it has been 'combed' - is this necessary? And are there important ecosystems within the beach sand that are affected by the regular compaction with an enormous tractor? Or am I worrying for nothing? Ans: Hi Lee, You are right to be concerned if the council beach cleaning approach results in rubbish being buried at the end of the beach. Plastics and other litter in the environment can impact a variety of marine fauna. I suggest that you contact you local Council and alert them about this so that they can improve their beach management techniques. Beach cleaning is a fact of life on many of the heavily used beaches on our coastline. It is generally aimed at picking up litter discarded by beach users and not at picking up wrack (natural debris that has been washed up on the beach). The main point here is that it needs to be done properly and practices should be upgraded as better information becomes available. As far as impact from beach cleaners is concerned, I am not aware of any specific studies done on the impact of these vehicles, but I am aware of work that has been done to determine the impact of four wheel drives on certain beaches and have found that they do affect the fauna that live there. See a recent journal articles: Schlacher and Thompson (2008) Physical impacts caused by off road vehicles to sandy beaches: spatial quantification of car tracks on an Australian barrier island. Journal of Coastal Management 24, 234-242. . The approach of council graders that I have seen take a more random approach each cleaning trip and there is not constant compaction of a single area or track which is often the case of 4 wheel drives which use many beaches. I think it would be an interesting study to conduct to determine the impact and could lead to improved management practices. It is important though that all ecological information is considered with respect to socio-economic drivers of each particular beach. |
Question Posted By: Peter |
| Qn: Which environmental issue in your field of expertise do you think is most underrated, and doesn't get the attention it deserves? Ans: I think the issue of cumulative impact or cumulative effect of many small actions or decisions is not well understood. We need more detailed information about small actions which are often not quantified because they are so subtle and yet could potentially be massive when scaled up. We also need to develop models by which we can scale up the information more effectively and more accurately so we can feed these to managers in a usable form with more certainty of the outcomes. They could then use these to make informed decisions. |