Martino Malerba

Martino leads the Teal Carbon group at Deakin’s Blue Carbon Lab. He is an environmental scientist, ecologist, and evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on freshwater wetlands.

Equivalent to coastal wetlands, teal carbon ecosystems are key to regulating greenhouse gases and mitigating the effects of climate change. However, their degradation due to land-use change, pollution, water extraction, and landscape modification can release large amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere.

For example, farm dams are among the highest greenhouse gas emitters of all freshwater ecosystems. Yet, simple management interventions (such as using fences to exclude livestock) can change these systems from a source of pollution (carbon sources) to becoming part of the solution (carbon sinks).

Dr Malerba’s research team works to quantify carbon emissions, restores degraded sites, explores strategies for greener practices, identifies social drivers of sustainable development, and explores financial mechanisms for better management of freshwater resources.

The Australian Research Council supports his research through a DECRA Fellowship. He collaborates with the Australian National Carbon Inventory team to improve our estimates of carbon emissions from freshwater systems, and with the Clean Energy Regulator to develop new methodologies for financial incentives (carbon credits).