Emmanuel Hanert – Professor of Environmental Modelling

New paper in Nature Climate Change

We investigated how global warming is changing connectivity between coral populations. By increasing larval mortality and reducing competency duration, it will reduce inter-reef connectivity, hampering recovery after disturbances and reducing the spread of warm-adapted genes.

SLIM - A multi-scale model of the land-sea continuum

SLIM is our in-house unstructured-mesh hydrodynamic model. It can seamlessly simulate flows from the river to the coastal ocean. It relies on the Discontinuous Galerkin finite element method to achieve unprecedented accuracy, even for very complex coastlines and bathymetry.

SeaLab - Coastal modeling in the cloud

SeaLab is a web platform that allows you to run state-of-the-art open-source models of the ocean circulation, waves, oil spills, sediments in the cloud.

New preprint on the environmental impact of a major coal mine project

We estimated the environmental impact of a major open-cut coal mine project located 10 km away from the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. We show that sediments released by mining activities could have a profound and long-distance effect on nearby marine ecosystems such as seagrass meadows and a dugong sanctuary.

New paper in Ocean Modelling

We studied the dynamics of the Congo River estuary with multi-scale baroclinic coastal ocean model SLIM3D. The model has been validated with in-situ salinity and temperature data. We show that the strong stratification in the estuary and the presence of a deep canyon lead to hypoxic conditions near the bottom.

My group is interested in mathematical modelling of complex systems, with applications in marine ecology, coastal oceanography, biomedicine and more! We develop a range of different models including multi-scale hydrodynamic models and high-order models of fractional diffusion. These models allow us to achieve unprecedented accuracy to bring new insight into the physical and biological processes at play.