Peter Ralph

As a passionate marine botanist, I believe there is no better place to be than at UTS right now. I have the privilege of leading the Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster (C3) after heading up the Aquatic Processes Group (APG) within the Department of Environmental Sciences.

Over the past 15 years my research has covered seagrasses, freshwater macrophytes, macroalgae and terrestrial plants from the scale of whole organisms to cellular and biochemical processes.Since 1998 my focus has been on coral reef ecosystems and the marine environment of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica resulting in leading edge research into coral photobiology, coral bleaching mechanisms, sea-ice algae and Antarctic phytoplankton.

The C3 has a strong foundation on which to begin its crucial work. The APG has developed major strengths in assessing the impact of human-induced change, as well as climate change, on ecologically important aquatic plant systems. The expertise developed using techniques such as chlorophyll a fluorescence has enabled my laboratory to focus on using photosynthetic tools to assess the impact of climate change on the microalgae that support vulnerable ecosystems including coral reefs, the Southern Ocean and Antarctic sea-ice.
I especially want to develop projects that link the mechanistic understanding of photosynthetic processes to human-induced changes in the environment.