The Global Wetlands Project hosted the inaugural Coastal Wetlands Twitter Conference on Tuesday 26 and Wednesday 27 October 2021. The #CWTC21 conference was held completely on Twitter – with internet access you could participate in the conference. Presenters, following a conference schedule, delivered their presentation via Tweets.

The conference program and links to the Twitter presentations can be found below. You can also view the Twitter presentations by searching ‘#CWTC21’ in Twitter. The four keynote talks (10 minutes each) are available on The Global Wetlands Project YouTube Channel.

The Twitter conference provided the opportunity for students, scientists, coastal wetland managers and policy-makers to come together and share their research and experiences of coastal wetlands on an international stage. A review of the engagement on Twitter with the presentations can be found on The Global Wetlands Project blog.

The #CWTC21 conference was based around three themes:

Lina Mtwana Nordlund
Associate Senior Lecturer, Uppsala University

Presentation: Seagrass ecosystem services

Dr Lina Mtwana Nordlund is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary scientist grounded in social-ecological theory and applied environmental sciences. She has a strong interest in sustainable coastal development with a focus on seagrass ecosystems, small-scale fisheries, ecosystem services, management and governance. Her research is conducted in Sweden, the Indo-Pacific and around the world.

Lina is the Director of the Indo-Pacific Seagrass Network, an interdisciplinary research network focusing on seagrass-associated fisheries. She is an associate Senior Lecturer at Uppsala University, Sweden and teaches about sustainable futures and coastal zone development.

Michael Sievers
Research Fellow, Griffith University

Presentation: Global typologies of coastal wetland status

Dr Michael Sievers is a marine ecologist at the Global Wetlands Project, Griffith University. He is working to drive scientific understanding of critical issues facing coastal ecosystems and building online tools to help address these issues more effectively and efficiently. As of 2022, he will begin an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) to better understand the relationships between plants and animals within restored coastal ecosystems. By focusing on a more animal-centric point of view, he hopes to improve restoration outcomes for wildlife and society.

Throughout his current work Michael has been adopting artificial intelligence techniques to enhance environmental monitoring. He plans to continue this as part of the DECRA. Before coming to Griffith University in 2018, his previous work centred around evaluating the ecological costs and benefits of artificial wetlands in urban landscapes, with a focus on ecological trap theory, ecotoxicology, metapopulation dynamics and urban ecology. His other area of expertise is aquaculture, primarily understanding the impact of biofouling and how to mitigate this impact and minimise animal welfare concerns in salmon farming.

Kerrylee Rogers
Associate Professor, University of Wollongong

Presentation: Coastal ecosystems are highly dynamic and global change models need your local-scale data

Associate Professor Kerrylee Rogers is a coastal geomorphologist/geographer at the University of Wollongong School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences. Experience in government and academia means her research is applied, and focuses on providing real-world solutions. Understanding the response of coastal ecosystems and landscapes to climate change is a core research interest. Attention is placed on the role of sea level in shaping coastal ecosystems, with mineral sediment and substrate organic matter addition being a critical process providing dual benefits of facilitating adaptation to sea-level rise, and contributing towards climate change mitigation.

In addition to her research, she leads an Asia-Pacific Regional project with the International Atomic Energy Agency focussed on building country capacity in the application of radiometric and isotopic techniques for assessing the vulnerability of coasts to sea-level rise. In her role as ‘Environmental Science’ academic program director and GeoQuest Research Centre director at UOW, she shares her passion for coastal sustainability with undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Anusha Rajkaran
Senior Lecturer, University of the Western Cape

Presentation: The impact of heavy metals and microplastics on the provision of ecosystem services by coastal habitats

Dr Anusha Rajkaran received her training from the Nelson Mandela University (formerly known as University of Port Elizabeth). She has been trained in the field of Botany and Estuarine Ecology. Her Honours, Masters and PhD focussed on different aspects of mangrove forest ecology; the methods, impacts and patterns of resource utilization of mangrove species in the Eastern Cape region gave rise to her first scientific papers. The PhD thesis entitled: A status assessment of mangrove forests in South Africa and the utilization of mangroves at Mngazana Estuary produced four scientific papers and a book chapter and increased her exposure to scientists in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), Australia and Belgium. After the completion of her PhD, Anusha was appointed to the Department of Botany at Rhodes University from October 2011 to November 2015. In December of 2015, Anusha joined the Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology at the University of the Western Cape.

Anusha’s research has expanded to the functioning of other estuarine habitats such as salt marsh and seagrass, provision of ecosystem services, establishing baseline estimates of microplastic and chemical pollutants and establishing indicators of health of habitats in South Africa. Her research covers most parts of the South African coastline and the research team includes honours, MSc and PhD students as well as PostDoctoral fellows.