This just in from Margie Hall from the Nature Society (Singapore) ...
NSS Tan Teck Guan Medal Presentation to Dr. Sasi Nayar by Mr. John Tan, followed by a Talk by Dr. Sasi Nayar
The Nature Society (Singapore) Tan Teck Guan Medal (for the best postgraduate thesis from a local university on an environmental/nature topic over the period 2003 - 2006) will be presented to Sasi Nayar for his 2003 NUS doctoral thesis on "Nutrient and Biotic Fluxes in Relation to Dispersal of Pollutants in Ponggol River."
Sasi Nayar, now at the South Australian Research and Development Institute, will then give a talk on his current research in Adelaide: "What killed the seagrasses off the Adelaide coast in Southern Australia?"
Outline of talk: "Since the 1940s, over 5000 ha of nearshore meadow forming seagrasses, Amphibolis and Posidonia, have been lost from the Adelaide metropolitan coastline in Southern Australia.
The loss of these seagrasses is of major concern due to their importance to near-shore productivity, seabed stability, and biodiversity.
Engineering works and urbanisation during the 20th century substantially increased coastal inputs via rivers, stormwater drains, and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) outfalls. Due to various coastal inputs, the metropolitan coast is no longer pristine, with elevated levels of nutrients, toxicants, and turbidity being detected and reported regularly over the last 30 years.
Although, each of these potential stressors has been implicated in the historical loss of seagrasses, this talk will specifically address the effect of nutrients on seagrass assessed from in situ chamber incubations, field experiments and mesocosm trials."
Date: Mon 9 July 2007
Time: 7.00pm to 9.00pm
Location: Gardens Briefing Room (next to Botanic Gardens Shop) at the Botanic Gardens Visitor Centre
More links to Sasi Nayar on the
habitatnews blog: PhD website, interview in Nature News, abstracts.
Missed the talk?Here's some blogs about the talk
A full report on the talk with thoughts about implications for our shores on the
budak blogThe habitatnews blog has
the full happenings with lots of links to more photos and Siva catches the young seagrassers (dubbed
Seagrass Angels) at the talk
On the
Labrador Park blog impressions of the talk by the young seagrassers
Check out the never-before-seen photos of Len's and Rudi's trip to Singapore! (Rudi's photos of course).
Including the manly landing at Cyrene ...
And ending with a nice group photo of all of us saying our favourite 'S' word. No, it's not 'seagrass'.
See, I keep telling everyone it's important to look cheerful and lively for the group photo, even though we haven't had breakfast, and only slept 3 hours for the last 3 days, and there's a whole lot of walking and bending and squinting ahead of us.
And has articles on important topics ...
Other fascinating articles in the newsletter include a yummy way to eat seagrasses!
Download the PDFs of the newsletter from the International Seagrass-Watch website
