The Australian Research Council has approved $1.6 million in funding for five projects involving Charles Darwin University researchers.
The $1.6 million has been awarded by the Australian Research Council’s National Competitive Grants Program for research projects starting next year.
The funding, under the Discovery Projects Scheme, supports collaborative research and development projects between higher education organisations and other organisations including industry, to enable the application of advanced knowledge to problems.
Under the Discovery Projects scheme, funding of $285,000 was awarded to the CDU-led Applied Economics program: Modelling payments for Environmental Services in Indigenous-held lands, which will examine the potential to provide employment to Indigenous people managing land previously considered to hold no commercial value.
Another CDU-led project received $78,420 for the Environmental Sciences project: Assessing the viability of ecosystem processes in habitat fragments: Lessons from land clearing in the tropical Savannas. This will explore how climate change and land degradation in southern Australia is increasing the demand for agricultural land in northern Australia.
The largest grant involving CDU researchers was for $580,000 and was awarded to La Trobe University’s Justice and Legal studies department: Challenges, possibilities and future directions: A national assessment of Australia’s Children’s Courts, a national study exploring how effective community and legal system responses are in light of philosophical and structural shifts in Australia.
Other grants awarded involving CDU researchers include $425,000 to the University of Queensland’s Ecology and Evolution project: Identifying cost-effective reforestation approaches for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration in the Australian wet tropics, and $290,000 to the Australian National University’s Soil and Water Sciences program: Assessing soil formation and erosion balances in the Top End with an expanded toolkit.
A further $7.4 million has been awarded to CDU’s Menzies School of Health Research by the National Health and Medical Research Council.