ProfessorPatrice Rey

Project Opportunities

Title: Landscape, tectonic and biodiversity

Summary of opportunity:

Earth is losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate and we need urgent, consistent, and cost-effective solutions to prevent the collapse of ecosystems to reach a point from which there will be no recovery. Complex mountainous landscapes host significant biodiversity as they provide species with easy access to a broad range of life-supporting environments. This critical relationship provides new avenues to address the loss of biodiversity. This post-graduate research project aims at creating the knowledge and delivering the technology to evaluate and rank the capacity of landscapes to support biodiversity now and in the future under various climatic scenarios, from single catchments to national parks, and to continents. This project will assist in decision-making in environmental management.

Opportunity synopsis:

1. Quantify and explain the spatial correlation between landscape complexity, habitat heterogeneity, and biodiversity in various geological and climatic settings in Australia and across the world. Establish whether collisional, extensional, and uplifted landscape support contrasting biodiversity or contrasting biodiversity patterns.
2. Explain how topographic complexity and habitat heterogeneity arise, persist and decline over millions of years, and how they respond to short-term disturbances such as earthquakes, extreme weather events, climate changes, and sea-level fluctuations. Establish to what extend regional biodiversity patterns are the product of the history of landscapes.
3. Design and deliver flexible, cost-effective, and open-source technologies to quantify the capacity of landscapes to support biodiversity now and hundreds of years in the future under various climatic scenarios and extreme disturbances.

--------------------------------------------------

Project Opportunities

Title: Water and mineral resources of Proterozoic rift-basins in Australia

Summary of opportunity:

This project addresses the fundamental tectonic and thermal processes involved in the development of basins' resources from water to mineral. It focusses on tectonic and thermal inheritances and how they control the development of these resources, and how they can be detected by modern exploration techniques using a multidisciplinary approach with a team of academic and industry experts with backgrounds in tectonics, surface processes and resource exploration. This project will deliver a new quantitative and integrated exploratory framework for the resource industry in Australia’s frontier sedimentary basins by integrating the latest advances in thermo-mechanical numerical, surface process, and geophysical modelling.

Opportunity synopsis:

1. How do inherited basement fault networks influence the development and subsequent inversion of basins under different boundary conditions?
2. Under what conditions do basement-cover coupling and decoupling occur, and how does coupling influence basement structural inheritance, the architecture of basins and their subsequent inversion?
3. What is the longevity of thermal anomalies related to intra-continental lithospheric extension under the hot geothermal conditions that would have prevailed in the Proterozoic and Phanerozoic lithosphere of North Australia?
4. What role does mass transfer at the Earth’s surface play in the redistribution of deviatoric stresses within the lithosphere? To what extent does locking of pre-existing basement faults due to sediment loading control the migration of active deformation away from regions of thick sedimentary accumulations into adjacent regions?

--------------------------------------------------

Project Opportunities

Title: Virtual reality to mitigate environmental, social and economic issues

Summary of opportunity:

Transportation of people is one of the most important sources of CO2 emissions contributing to global warming. We can reduce transport emission significantly, quickly and in a cost-effective manner by using virtual reality. Virtual reality offers a viable alternative to commuting for all activities involving face-to-face meetings for education, business, or for accessing services. In addition, allowing people to work, study and access services from home has a plethora of social, economic, commercial, environmental, and cultural benefits for regional Australia. This project will measure the effectiveness of STEM learning in a virtual immersive face-to-face environment compared to an in-class environment. This project will enable and accelerate the adoption of VR technology by addressing the psychological factors of resistance and providing an open and transformative VR platform.

Opportunity synopsis:

Design a suite of simple undergraduate STEM learning activities and deliver them in a Virtual Reality and normal classroom environments. Collect, analyse, and interpret data comparing and contrasting the learning outcomes and learning experiences achieved through VR and classroom environments. Measure the capacity of VR technology to help STEM students to develop better 3D thinking and better 3D spatial awareness. Document and measure students' engagement in VR worlds.

----------Current Research Projects----------

What is Patrice thinking about these days?
• The origin of plate tectonics on Earth.
• Rift basins and continental margins.
• Precious opal in central Australia.
• Metamorphic and oceanic core complexes.
• Tectonic processes and landscape evolution