Anja Scheffers

Biography

Professor Scheffers is the Associate Dean of Education in the Faculty of Science and Engineering. She joined Southern Cross University in 2007 and taught into various undergraduate units in the Bachelor of Science. She is the co-lead Director for Future Earth Coasts – a global research network dedicated to support coastal sciences.

Research

During her studies of Physical Geography and by a series of accidental turns Dr Scheffers became fascinated to investigate how coastal environments have changed in the past. She is particularly interested in processes that shape and modify coastal landscapes over a variety of length and time scales and the coupling and feedback between such processes, their rates, and their relative roles, especially in the contexts of variation in climatic and tectonic influences and in light of changes due to human impact:

• Understanding past and modern marine physical natural hazards such as tsunamis and storms The development of long-term records of tsunamis/cyclones from geological and biological proxy evidence as well as historical documentary records
• Exploring linkages between Late Quaternary climate and landscape change focusing on past sea level and response of coastal ecosystems, particularly coral reefs
• Quaternary geochronology based on ESR and U-series dating and multi-proxy study of corals Palaeoclimatology