Dr Nigel Swarts, Research Fellow, UTAS, Research Consultant, Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens presents Terrestrial Orchid Conservation and Research: A Tasmanian Perspective — Sunday 22nd May, 1.30pm Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk.

Tasmania has a rich orchid flora reliant on important above and below ground ecological interactions for growth and survival. Due to the high specificity of these interactions and the changes imposed on Tasmania’s landscape through anthropogenic activities, many of Tasmania’s orchids are endangered and threatened with extinction. 214 native orchids have been recorded in Tasmania and of these, 68 are listed as threatened on Tasmania’s Threatened Species Protection Act and 32 are listed on the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act. At the Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens, we are undertaking research to determine why these species are threatened and how best to conserve them using key features of their complicated biology and ecology.

Dr Nigel Swarts is a Research Fellow in the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture at the University of Tasmania and a research consultant hosted by the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. Nigel has a background in Conservation Biology with research focusing on rare and endangered orchids from across Australia. He has a strong track record in the field of orchid conservation with two highly cited review articles. He completed his PhD with distinction on the conservation of critically endangered orchids with the University of Western Australia in 2008. Nigel’s research has led to a better understanding of the role of mycorrhizal specialization in the ecology and rarity of the Orchidaceae.

Admission: $6 General Public, $4 Friends of the Museum and Students.

Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania.

To assist us with the organisation of this event please RSVP by Thursday 21st April 2016 to either bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798

Dr Nicholas Chantler PhD, AM, Major – Australian Army Intelligence Corps – Retired 2015 will present Bee Bop a Lula, She’s My Honey in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk 1.30 pm Sunday 24th April 2016

We have known a lot about the European honey bee for a very long time; but with advances in technology we discover even more. The importance of this humble insect becomes even more significant when we consider the threats to its existence and the impact of losing it can have on us. This presentation gives a plethora of interesting facts with recent developments and discoveries about bees and beekeeping. The products of the hive; understanding the colony; breeding queen bees; pollination and productivity; a world-scale perspective on bees; current reports in the news; advances in medical science; the threats to bees; and the application of technology, are all considered.

Dr Nicholas Chantler has a background which encompasses agriculture; education and academia; and, military intelligence and the corporate environments. His formal education in entomology was at the University of Queensland as part of his Bachelor of Science degree. In 2010 Nicholas was honoured for his work, particularly as an educator, being made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). He retired from Queensland University of Technology and the Army last-year. Having held a life-long interest in the biological sciences whilst working in his professional careers, he now has the time to dedicate to his special interest of breeding and rearing Queen Bees. In 2015 he was appointed to the Australian HoneyBee Industry Council’s B-QUAL board, which deals with certification and food standards for honey producers.
Admission: $6 General Public, $4 Friends of the Museum and Students

Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania

To assist us with the organisation of this event

RSVP by Thursday 21st April 2016:

Email bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798

Dr Dan Gregory presents The accumulation of trace elements in diagenetic pyrite, an example from the metal rich Derwent Estuary and metal poor Huon Estuary — Tuesday May 3 2016, 8 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).

Dr Dan Gregory in the Southern Urals, Russia

Talk summary:

The Derwent River is known to contain significant zinc (Zn) and other metals due to historic smelting operations. In this study detailed analysis of sediment cores, from the Derwent and Huon estuaries, coupled with different chemical extraction techniques were used to determine where this metal enrichment is and how strongly the metals are held in the sediment. These data were further utilized to examine how trace elements are contained within pyrite forming in sediments.

Speaker, Dr Dan Gregory:

Daniel Gregory graduated with an honours degree in geology from the University of British Columbia in 2007. After this he engaged in greenfield geological exploration in the Yukon Territory, Canada until 2010, when he started his PhD in pyrite geochemistry at the University of Tasmania. He finished his dissertation in 2013 and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at CODES in pyrite chemistry and ore deposit vectoring until October 2015 when he started a post-doc at the University of California Riverside with Tim Lyons.

All welcome to this free lecture. Tuesday May 3 2016, 8 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).

MEDIA RELEASE — Outstanding Tasmanian Researchers Honoured, 25 February 2016

Outstanding Tasmanian Researchers Honoured

One of Tasmanian’s oldest organisations has announced awards honouring two outstanding Tasmanian researchers. Since 1843 the Royal Society of Tasmania has been promoting Tasmanian historical, scientific and technological knowledge for the benefit of Tasmanians.

Dr Dan Gregory in the Southern Urals, Russia

Young researcher Dr Daniel Gregory has won the Society’s Doctoral Award for his exciting new research tracking the chemistry of the ocean back at least 3.6 billion years. Part of his work involved the study of muds on the floor of the River Derwent determining how metals had been absorbed into the top few metres of mud. He applied the findings to ancient black mud that formed on the seafloor in Western Australia over 2600 million years ago.

‘Dr Gregory’s work has produced key information about the ancient oceans and has been widely published,’ said Professor Ross Large, President of The Royal Society of Tasmania. Dr Gregory is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California.

Dr Dan Gregory presents The accumulation of trace elements in diagenetic pyrite, an example from the metal rich Derwent Estuary and metal poor Huon Estuary — Tuesday May 3 2016, 8 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).

Professor Matt King from the University of Tasmania has been awarded the Society’s M. R. Banks Medal for his internationally recognised research including measuring ice sheet change through the application of geodetic techniques such as GPS.

‘Matt’s research received wide global attention when he established that glaciers do not flow slowly and smoothly but vary on time-scales of even minutes!’ said Prof. Large. As a result of his research, glaciologists have rethought the way they view glaciers and have since developed new field programs to use these measurements to probe the properties of large glaciers.

Professor Matt King presents Antarctica: Frozen not Frigid — Sunday 20th March 2016, 1.30 pm — Venue: Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk.

University of Tasmania, Glacier researcher Professor Matt King. Picture: Peter Mathew

Prof. Matt King started focusing on Antarctica during his PhD at the University of Tasmania, where he quantified multi-decadal changes in the motion of a large floating Antarctic ice shelf using surveying data. He then moved to the UK where he researched the application of GPS positioning to understanding subsidence of offshore platforms, glacial dynamics, Earth deformation and Antarctica’s contribution to recent sea-level change. He has travelled to both Antarctica and Greenland. He has been back at UTas since 2012, and in 2015 the Royal Society (London) awarded him the Kavli Medal and Lecture.

Venue: Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk.

Admission: $6 General Public, $4 Friends of the Museum and Students
Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania
To assist us with the organization of this event
RSVP by Thursday 17th March 2016
Email: bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798

John K. Davidson presents The Upstream Petroleum Industry; Tasmania’s Position — Tuesday 5 April 2016, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).

The Upstream Petroleum Industry; Tasmania’s Position

The global petroleum industry is divided into the ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ components. Tasmania has a small intermittent upstream exploration and ‘invisible’ production industry via two offshore pipelines from Bass Strait to Victoria. The downstream transportation, refining and marketing is supported by the shipment of refined products to Tasmanian ports.

Oil, condensate and gas is produced from the Yolla field 100 km north of Burnie in central Bass Basin and is piped to Lang Lang southeast of Melbourne. Gas is also produced from the Thylacine field in Otway Basin northwest of King Island and is piped to Port Campbell in eastern Victoria. The Trefoil gas discovery 40 km west of Yolla is planned for development.

While the export of petroleum products is modest, the ‘export’ of geological and engineering knowledge to the global upstream industry has been significant. The history of Tasmanian’s contributions is best taken from the late Prof S. W. Carey in the 1930’s, via the Yolla discovery in 1985 to the present, with insights into the future both locally and globally.

John K Davidson:

John graduated from the University of Tasmania in 1969 with a BSc (Hons) degree in Geology.

He worked for Exxon from 1970 to 1980 in Sydney, Exxon’s research centre in Houston , and Esso UK in London before returning to Sydney as exploration project leader of the Esso/BHP Exmouth Plateau deepwater drilling programme.

He has been a worldwide consultant since 1980 and farmed out two wells to Amoco in the Bass Basin which resulted in the Yolla oil and gas discovery in 1985.

In 2000 he patented a method for determining Earth stresses from interpreted seismic surveys. The method provides solutions to many technical challenges in the oil exploration and production industries such as planning horizontal well trajectories to avoid wellbore collapse.

Professor Matt King presents Antarctica: Frozen not Frigid — Tuesday 1 March 2016, 8.00 pm — Venue: TMAG Central Gallery enter via Main entrance through the courtyard from Dunn Place

Antarctica: Frozen not Frigid

The common perception of the Antarctica continent is that is frozen and unmovable. Over the last two decades, remote fieldwork and technological advances have yielded geodetic datasets that show that much of Antarctica may be frozen but it far from unmovable. Rather, the ice sheet and the bedrock it sits upon are highly dynamic. GPS measurements of ice sheet motion show changes on timescales of minutes to hours to decades, while even more precise measurements of bedrock motion shows rapid and prolonged response to Earthquakes and glacier thinning. This presentation will highlight how measuring Antarctica’s response to a series of great natural experiments has given new insights into fundamental processes that are active within the ice sheet and solid Earth. They allow us to be better prepared to predict the future of the great ice sheet as it becomes increasingly unfrozen.

University of Tasmania, Glacier researcher Professor Matt King. Picture: Peter Mathew

Professor Matt King:

Matt started focusing on Antarctica during his PhD at the University of Tasmania, where he quantified multi-decadal changes in the motion of a large floating Antarctic ice shelf using surveying data. He then moved to the UK where he researched the application of GPS positioning to understanding subsidence of offshore platforms, glacial dynamics, Earth deformation and Antarctica’s contribution to recent sea-level change. He has travelled to both Antarctica and Greenland and published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, including several in the leading journals Science and Nature. In late 2012 he returned to the University of Tasmania as Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor of Polar Geodesy. In 2015 the Royal Society (London) awarded him the Kavli Medal and Lecture.

Dr Nick Shuley presents Reflections on Radar in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk 1.30 pm Sunday 28th February 2016

Dr Nick Shuley

B.E., M. Eng. Sc UNSW, PhD Electrical Engineering CTH (Sweden)

Reflections on Radar
Radar as it is known today is arguably the most important long range sensor that is used in every facet of modern-day life. Using electromagnetic waves, this invention, only some seventy odd years old, has so many diverse applications beyond the original military applications for which it was designed that it has been often described as the greatest invention of the modern era. This presentation will trace radar’s military beginnings from around WWII to the many present-day diverse radar systems that impinge on our everyday lives perhaps without us realizing it. An explanation in layman’s terms of the basic operation of radar will then be followed by descriptions and illustrations of specialist radars that detect, track, image, recognize targets and map earth’s features both in military and civilian applications. The presentation will conclude with speculations on the future of radar.

Dr Nick Shuley holds B.E. and M.Eng.Sc. degrees from the University of New South Wales and a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. He was a member of the IEEE (1979-2010), and the Editorial Board of the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (1979-2010). He has worked in the UK, and as a post-doctoral scientist in universities, and as a company consultant, across Scandinavia, Spain and Australia, including working on projects for the European Space Agency (ESA) and as a Visiting Scientist Stipend for the Spanish Government. He has been an Associate Professor in the fields of Electromagnetics, Electronics and microwave at RMIT University in Melbourne, and at the University of Queensland, until his retirement in 2011. He is published extensively and internationally on radar and other electromagnetic phenomena and has supervised over 20 Masters and PhD students. He still teaches in various areas of applied electromagnetics.

Admission: $6 General Public, $4 Friends of the Museum and Students
Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania
To assist us with the organisation of this event
RSVP by Thursday 25th February 2016:
Email bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798

2016 Presidents Address, The Royal Society of Tasmania — Ocean Acidification and Atmosphere Oxygenation in Deep Time: A Multi-Proxy Approach to Tracking Past Ocean Chemistry — Tuesday 2 February, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).

Searching for clues to past oceans – Lyme Regis, Jurassic Coast, UK.

Prof. Ross R. Large is the outgoing President of the Royal Society of Tasmania, a UTAS Distinguished Professor and Professor of Economic Geology.

First order trace element (TE) concentrations in the past oceans are controlled by several factors including; composition of eroded source rocks, oxygen and carbon dioxide contents of the atmosphere, ocean pH, temperature, salinity, organic productivity and trace element adsorption capacity. Our recent studies at the University of Tasmania investigating the Laser Ablation-ICPMS trace element chemistry of marine pyrite have tracked TE variations in the oceans, through the Proterozoic and Palaeozoic, and related these to cycles of bio-essential nutrient concentrations, atmosphere oxygen content and mass extinction events (Large et al., 2014; 2015; Long et al., 2015). Certain TE are essential for life (eg, Ni, Cu, Co, Mn, Zn, Se) and have controlled evolutionary pathways (Williams and Rickarby, 2012), other TE are redox sensitive (eg, Se, Mo, Au), and have been used as proxies for oxygen content of the atmosphere, several TE are sensitive to variations in atmosphere/ocean carbon dioxide content (e.g. Cu and U), whereas still others are sensitive to ocean acidity (eg, Ag, Zn, Pb, Bi, Cd, Sb).

Ammonites flourished in the Jurassic oceans 180 million years ago.

Black shale outcrops – represent ancient seafloor muds.

Close-up of black shales showing the mineral pyrite (FeS2) silver-yellow that when analysed with a laser gives the clues to ancient ocean chemistry and mass extinctions.

In this talk I outline a multi-proxy approach, using a variety of trace elements and their ratios, from our extensive marine pyrite database. The data indicate broad first orders cycles of concentrations of ocean trace elements that form an internally consistent pattern that can be related to major geological events over the last 1000 Ma. These cycles suggest there have been basically two end member ocean conditions. Warm, nutrient-rich oceans, with relatively low pH (7 to 7.8) and elevated pCO2, are evident in Early to Mid Cambrian, Silurian to Mid Devonian, Carboniferous, Mid-Late Permian and the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. The other end member is cool nutrient-poor oceans, with a more alkaline pH (7.8 to 8.4), formed during periods of low pCO2, which dominated the Neoproterozoic, Ordovician, Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous, Early Permian, much of the Mesozoic and the Neogene. The nutrient poor oceans broadly correlate with periods of maximum carbonate reef development, include all the global glaciation events, and three of the five mass extinction events.

A monster ammonite from the Jurassic Coast.

This example of a multi-proxy approach, that draws on an extensive marine pyrite database, and considers inter-relationships between key long-term ocean drivers, provides a new integrated interpretation of ocean chemistry over the last 1000 million years.

References

Large RR., Halpin, JA., Danyushevsky. LV., Maslennikov. VV., Bull SW., Long, JA., Gregory, DD., Lounejeva, E, Lyons, TW., Sack, PJ., McGoldrick, PJ. and Calver, CR., 2014, Trace element content of sedimentary pyrite as a new proxy for deep-time ocean-atmosphere evolution: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 389, p. 209-220.

Large R.R., Halpin, J.A., Lounjeva, E., Danyushevsky, L.D., Maslennikov, V.V., Gregory, D., Sack, P.J., Haines, P.W., Long, J.A., Makoundi, C. and Stepanov, A.S., 2015, Cycles of nutrient trace elements in the Phanerozoic ocean: Gondwana Research, v. 28, p. 1282-1293

Long, J.A., Large, R.R., Lee, M.S.Y., Benton, M.J., Danyushevsky, L.V., Chiappe, L.M., Halpin, J.A., Cantrill, D. and Lottermoser, B., 2015, Severe selenium depletion in the Phanerozoic oceans as a factor in three global mass extinctions: Gondwana Research, v. 28, (available online)

Williams, R.J.P. and Rickarby, R.E.M., 2012, Evolution’s Destiny: Co-evolving chemistry of the Environment and Life: Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, UK, 319 pp.

Tuesday 2 February, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG, 19 Davey St. Hobart (entry from Dunn Place)
All interested people are welcome. Free admission.

Readings from Tasman’s Journal – December 3, 2015 at 12 noon at the Tasman Monument on the shore of the inlet, Blackman Bay, Imlay Street, Dunalley

Readings from Tasman’s Journal

You, your family and friends are welcome to be present at the Tasman Monument on the shore of the inlet, Blackman Bay, Imlay Street, Dunalley for readings from Tasman’s journal on December 3, 2015 at 12 noon for 20-30 minutes.

For further information please contact us using the contact us link.