We love our regular engagement with ANU School of Art and Design students. This time they’re bravely burrowing into the Mulloon Creek floodplain, where our monitoring team has extracted soil cores from several sites as part of the Mulloon Rehydration Initiative.

The Mulloon Rehydration Initiative is a catchment-scale project that aims to rebuild the natural landscape function of the Mulloon catchment and boost its resilience to climatic extremes for more reliable stream flows, improved ecosystem functioning and enhanced agricultural productivity.

The data from the initiative tells a valuable story of the serpentine, layered structure of floodplains. Sharing this story can help us understand how vital they are to the storage and movement of water in both wet and dry times. The students will bring the soil core data to life in digital and material form – as textiles, models, sculpture – not sure yet!!

Looking forward to welcoming you to Mulloon soon and seeing where this project takes you. The team includes Laura D’Arcy, Ankita Unnikrishnan, Jiaming Zhao, Mia Garland, Yasmina Muldoon and Duncan Currie.

This project is funded by the Federal Government through the citizen science project Modelling Landscape Rehydration for Catchments, Communities and Curriculum.