ANU design students illustrate the Mulloon floodplain
ANU Design students overlooking the Mulloon floodplain.
Recently Mulloon’s Science Office and Spatial + Remote Sensing Specialist Chris Inskeep hosted an enthusiastic group of students at Mulloon North, to show them the monitoring sites that traverse the floodplain. This student group is well into a project to create a model that reveals the complex layers of earth sampled in our soil cores. As the below illustration shows, they have developed a strong timber and textile concept for their model, working with Mulloon’s hydrologist Tony Bernardi. It’s a terrific example of creative science communication in action!
Student Laura D’Arcy provided the following account of their visit:
“During our morning at Mulloon North with Chris, our team gained an insight into the landscape, the landholders and the types of monitoring and data collection and analysis currently undertaken at the Mulloon Institute. We learnt about the importance of this data collection and how this data informs land management practices in the Mulloon region and around Australia.
ANU Design students learning about monitoring and data collection at Mulloon.
While walking on the property, we saw some planting and land rehabilitation projects. It was interesting to see that there is a diversity of native and introduced species at Mulloon. We learned that a variety of plants can be utilised for land rehabilitation whilst supporting agricultural practices. On the property, we collected plant samples of native and introduced species, such as wattles, tea trees, eucalyptus and willow trees. We are excited to experiment with natural dying and weaving with these samples.
ANU Design students learning about the variety of plants used for riparian rehabilitation.
Chris was an excellent guide around Mulloon and a resource for our project. Chris spoke to us about GIS and provided us with possible explorations, tips and people to contact for our project. At Mulloon, we all gained a greater understanding of the complexities of the Mulloon landscape and how this might inform our project design and data visualisation.”
We’re excited to see your model come to life! Thanks for visiting Laura D’Arcy, Ankita Unnikrishnan, Jiaming Zhao, Mia Garland, Yasmina Muldoon and Duncan Currie.
This project is funded by the Australian Government through the citizen science project ‘Modelling Landscape Rehydration for Catchments, Communities and Curriculum’.
Prototype of the physical model coming together by ANU Design students.