Dr Megan Saunders
Pronouns: she,her,hers
Senior Research Scientist
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Biography
Dr Megan Saunders is a coastal ecological modeller who's research examines environmental and human drivers of change in coastal marine ecosystems, including seagrass, mangroves, coral reefs, oyster reefs, saltmarsh and kelp forests. She works in the Sustainable Marine Futures Program at CSIRO Environment (formerly Oceans and Atmosphere) and is based in Brisbane, Australia.
Dr Saunders' disciplinary expertise and leadership in coastal marine restoration is recognized through her co-leadership of the Australian Coastal Restoration Network and leadership of National Environmental Science Program (NESP) funded research on stakeholder research needs related to coastal restoration Australia. She currently holds a Julius Career Award from CSIRO to conduct research into social and environmental drivers of restoration success in marine ecosystems.
Much of her current research uses Structured Decision Making as a framework to underpin research on restoration of coastal and marine ecosystems. This framework is useful as it is evidence-based and transparent, and it lends itself well to involving stakeholders in decision making processes and to focusing thinking and data collection for scientific applications. She current leads research in this theme in Australia and Latin America.
Dr Saunders contributes modelling expertise to a number of Blue Carbon research projects throughout the Indo-Pacific, including Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. In particular, she has expertise is predictive modelling of seagrass ecosystems.
Dr Saunders has a formal background in marine ecology and oceanography. She has two decades of research experience in a variety of coastal ecosystems, including empirical field based research (ship-based, scuba, and shallow coastal) and modelling. For the past decade her research has included highly interdisciplinary collaborations aimed at addressing challenging coastal management issues. For instance: reconciling multiple objectives for coastal planning for sea-level rise, addressing whether land- or marine-based conservation interventions would best benefit coastal systems influenced by land-use change, examining how environmental policies related to biodiversity offsets influence marine ecosystems, examining interactions among multiple stressors of ecosystems, and working with end-users to understand restoration decision support needs.
Her modelling research commonly utilizes spatial data obtained from satellite remote sensing. These include spatial data of marine habitat distribution, water quality, elevation/bathymetry, oceanographic parameters such as wave height, and land uses. She therefore has a number of collaborations with geospatial and remote sensing experts. Her research has been published in highly regarded multidisciplinary and disciplinary journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Climate Change, Current Biology and PloS Biology.
Academic Qualifications
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2010
PhD Oceanography
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada -
2002
BSc Marine Biology
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada
Achievements and Awards
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2017-2019
UQ Development Fellowship
The University of Queensland -
2016-2016
Tuition Scholarship
National Excellence in Educational Leadership Initiative -
2015-2015
Bommies Award for science communication video on impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef Foundation -
2010-2010
Nomination for best PhD thesis completed at Dalhousie University in 2009
Dalhousie University -
2010-2010
Nomination for the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies Distinguished Dissertation Award, for the thesis ranked 1st among Engineering, Medical & Science disciplines at Dalhousie University in 2009
Dalhousie University -
2010-2010
Selected participant to the Ecological Dissertations in Aquatic Sciences symposium
America Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) -
2009-2010
Endeavour Research Fellowship
Australian Government -
2009-2009
Best Presentation, Conference of Dalhousie Oceanography Graduate Students
Dalhousie Oceanography Students Assotiation -
2007-2009
Canada Graduate Scholarship D-2
Canadian National Sciences and Engineering Research Council -
2007-2008
President’s Award
Dalhousie University Faculty of Graduate Studies -
2007-2009
Predoctoral Scholarship
Izaak Walton Killam Foundation -
2007-2007
Scholarship
Women Divers Hall of Fame -
2005-2006
Postgraduate Scholarship MSc
Canadian National Sciences and Engineering Research Council -
2005-2005
Kathy Ellis Memorial Book Prize
Dalhousie University Department of Oceanography -
2004-2005
Canada Graduate Scholarship MSc
Canadian National Sciences and Engineering Research Council -
2004-2009
Scholarship
Dalhousie Faculty of Graduate Studies
Current Roles
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Senior Research Scientist
Coastal ecosystem modelling
Professional Experiences
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2017-2019
Senior Research Fellow / UQ Development Fellow
School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland -
2016-2017
Research Fellow
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland -
2011-2014
Research Fellow
The Global Change Institute & Marine Spatial Ecology Lab, The University of Queensland -
2010-2010
Endeavour Postdoctoral Research Associate
Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia
Publications
We have publications by Dr Megan Saunders