The place of birth in Kafa Zone, Ethiopia

In this qualitative study, I used an ethnographic approach to provide an understanding about the place of birth in rural and semiurban Kafa Zone, Ethiopia. I interviewed women about birth at home and asked what would happen if there were serious problems and a woman was taken to a health facility. The development of health services aimed at reducing maternal mortality implies that the place of birth must change from home to health facility, but the distance from international policy to its implementation is vast and the pathway is not a direct, linear route.

Spatial patterns, landscape genetics and post virus recovery of blacklip abalone, Haliotis rubra (Leach), in the western commercial fishing zone of Victoria

Historically, collecting nearshore habitat information has been problematic. Existing methods, such as aerial and satellite image interpretation are limited due to the attenuation of light in the water column obscuring the seabed structure. The advent of airborne bathymetric LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) systems (laser scanning of the seabed) now provides high-resolution seabed ‘images’ in areas that were previously difficult to survey. LiDAR imagery is available for the entire coastline of Victoria, Australia to depths of around 25 m, after being initially collected for climate change modelling by the Future Coasts Program (http://www.climatechange.vic.gov.au/adapting-to-climate-change/future-coasts). This dataset has provided the opportunity to test its applicability to inform fisheries management. Detailed geophysical information combined with spatially explicit AbTrack GPS located fisheries records and targeted genetic sampling is used in this study to provide a better understanding of the extent of available fishing grounds, direction of fishing effort and stock population structure within the Victorian western zone abalone fishery.
The species distribution modelling technique MaxEnt was used to produce a potential habitat suitability map for abalone in an attempt to capture the effective footprint of the  fishery. Also, by interrogating the spatially defined effort localities, we demonstrate an approach that may be used to identify areas where fishing effort is concentrated, and how this parameter changes temporally.
Despite barriers to adult dispersal (soft sediment barriers between reef patches), the genetic study indicates that larval movement is able to homogenize the gene pool over  large geographic distances. The western, central and eastern zone abalone stocks in Victoria were found to be a single large panmictic unit. This indicates high levels of stock connectivity and no obvious impacts of Abalone Viral Ganglioneuritis (AVG) on the genetic health of western zone stocks. We used detailed seafloor structure information interpreted from LiDAR to inform a replicated hierarchical fine scale genetic sampling design. We demonstrated that there may be extensive migration among abalone stocks across the Victorian abalone fishery.
This is contrary to previous studies that suggest recruitment is highly localised. In combination, these findings provide a valuable insight into the biology of H. rubra and immediate benefits for fisheries management. We discuss these results in the context of predicting resilience and adaptive potential of H. rubra stocks to environmental pressures and the spread of heritable diseases.
Adoption pathways are also provided to benefit future stock augmentation activities to catalyse the recovery of AVG affected reef codes. As larval dispersal is likely to be spatially and temporally variable, some AVG affected stocks are likely to recover through natural recruitment, while others will benefit from augmentation activities to ‘kick-start’ stock recovery. Evidence of neutral genetic homogeneity across Victorian reef codes suggests that the relocation of animals is unlikely to have significant genetic risks; however the potential for locally adaptive genetic differences may exist, and should be taken into consideration in future stock augmentation planning.
When combined, the spatial and genetic analyses provide valuable insights into stock productivity within the western zone fishery. Reefs appear to be expansive and support much available habitat, and the movement of larvae among reef structures is likely to be extensive in this region. Consequently, we propose that colonisation success and productivity is likely to be driven by ecological factors such as resources and/or competition, or physical factors such as wave exposure.

Storm versus calm : Variation in fauna associated with drifting macrophytes in sandy beach surf zones

New insights about nearshore dynamics came from studying the effects of regular storms in South Australia on drifting marine macrophytes, consequent wrack accumulation and associated fauna in beach surf zones across three different regions. This study examined whether the influence of storms may be more pronounced in sheltered coastal waters compared to more exposed coastlines where biota could have adaptations to persist in larger swell conditions. There were obvious regional differences for wrack species richness, abundances and assemblages that matched the attached floral subtidal landscape in each region. Consequently, invertebrates also differed amongst regions, which highlight the close affinity that some invertebrates have with drifting macrophytes. Fish were not so closely aligned to the regional patterns identified for wrack or invertebrates suggesting that many fish are using wrack accumulations as habitat but, being highly mobile, they may actively and constantly move into, out of and within these habitat features. Well-known beach-type models focused upon beach morphology may be more pertinent to the ecology of the surf zones offshore than previously thought, being the most consistent indicator of wrack accumulations and their fauna. This new evidence on the ecology of nearshore waters during storm versus calm weather in multiple regions and the subsequent influence on wrack-fauna associations in sandy-beach surf zones are important for future beach management, particularly when and where large wrack accumulations occur.

Movement ecology of nomadic arid zone waterfowl

This thesis provides insights into the spatial and temporal patterns of movement in nomadic waterfowl, the response of birds to rapid environmental change, behavioural flexibility of avian movements and the ability of birds to locate seemingly unpredictable water bodies in vast arid landscapes.

Heat affected zone microstructures and their influence on toughness in two microalloyed HSLA steels

Microstructures and Charpy impact properties have been examined in two microalloyed steels following heat treatments to simulate weld heat affected zone (HAZ) structures over a range of heat input conditions, characterised by the cooling time from 800 to 500°C (Δt8/5). The base materials were low carbon structural steel plates microalloyed with vanadium and nitrogen (V-N) and niobium (Nb), respectively. The toughnesses of the HAZs displayed remarkably different behaviours as shown by their impact transition temperatures. For the V-N steel, the toughness improved with increasingly rapid cooling (low heat input conditions) whereas the Nb steel showed an opposite trend. Some of this behaviour could be explained by the presence of coarse ferrite grains in the slowly cooled V-N steel. However, other conditions where all the structures were bainitic and rather similar in optical micrographs gave widely different toughness values. The recently developed method of five dimensional boundary analysis based on electron backscattering diffraction has been applied to these cases for the first time. This showed that the lath boundaries in the bainite were predominantly on {1 1 0} planes of the ferrite and that the average spacing of these boundaries varied depending on steel composition and cooling rate. Since {1 1 0} is also the slip plane in ferrite, it is considered that close spacing between the lath boundaries inhibits general plasticity at stress concentrations and favours initiation of fracture. The differences between the two steels are believed to be due to their transformation behaviours on cooling where precipitation of vanadium nitride in austenite accelerates ferrite formation and raises the temperature of the phase transformation in V-N steels.

Exploring spatiotemporal trends in commercial fishing effort of an abalone fishing zone: a GIS-based hotspot model

Assessing patterns of fisheries activity at a scale related to resource exploitation has received particular attention in recent times. However, acquiring data about the distribution and spatiotemporal allocation of catch and fishing effort in small scale benthic fisheries remains challenging. Here, we used GIS-based spatio-statistical models to investigate the footprint of commercial diving events on blacklip abalone (Haliotis rubra) stocks along the south-west coast of Victoria, Australia from 2008 to 2011. Using abalone catch data matched with GPS location we found catch per unit of fishing effort (CPUE) was not uniformly spatially and temporally distributed across the study area. Spatial autocorrelation and hotspot analysis revealed significant spatiotemporal clusters of CPUE (with distance thresholds of 100's of meters) among years, indicating the presence of CPUE hotspots focused on specific reefs. Cumulative hotspot maps indicated that certain reef complexes were consistently targeted across years but with varying intensity, however often a relatively small proportion of the full reef extent was targeted. Integrating CPUE with remotely-sensed light detection and ranging (LiDAR) derived bathymetry data using generalized additive mixed model corroborated that fishing pressure primarily coincided with shallow, rugose and complex components of reef structures. This study demonstrates that a geospatial approach is efficient in detecting patterns and trends in commercial fishing effort and its association with seafloor characteristics.