Throwing around worms and dirt to make the Coorong healthier

Read the full story in Cosmos.

The Coorong lagoon, at the end of the Murray River in South Australia, has faced a tough few decades as successive droughts have made the water saltier and more difficult for threatened species to live in.

But a new technique, developed by a collaboration of half a dozen different institutions, has just been shown to improve the health of the lagoon floor (its benthic health).

It involves adding more dirt – and some worms – from healthier areas, to kickstart a process called “bioturbation”.

“Bioturbation is pretty simple,” explains Dr Orlando Lam-Gordillo, a researcher at Flinders University and lead author on a paper describing the research, which is published in Science of the Total Environment.