Colin WOODROFFE

Position: Professor
Room: 41.G05
Phone: +61 2 4221 3359
Email: colin_woodroffe@uow.edu.au

Research Interests

Colin Woodroffe is a coastal geomorphologist, with an international research focus on the morphology, stratigraphy and sedimentary dynamics of tropical and subtropical coasts, and the application of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to the study of processes and change in the coastal zone. The wide range of his interests is summarised in his recent books Coasts: form process and evolution (2003), and the Coast of Australia (2009) which is shown below. He has active research projects in the following areas:

Morphodynamics of estuaries and deltas
 Reef morphology and sedimentation
 Coral paleoclimatology and ocean circulation
 Reef island evolution and climate change
 GIS and the coast

Representative Publications

Short, A.D. and Woodroffe, C.D. 2009 The Coast of Australia, Cambridge University Press, 288pp.
http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/
catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521873987

Woodroffe, C.D., Brooke, B.P., Linklater, M., Kennedy, D.M., Jones, B.G., Buchanan, C., Mleczko, R., Hua, Q. and Zhao, J.  (2010), Response of coral reefs to climate change: Expansion and demise of the southernmost Pacific coral reef, Geophysical Research Letters, 37, L15602, doi:10.1029/2010GL044067

Woodroffe, C.D. (2008) Reef-island topography and the vulnerability of atolls to sea-level rise. Global and Planetary Change, 62, 77-96.

Woodroffe, C.D., B. Samosorn, Q. Hua, and D.E. Hart (2007) Incremental accretion of a sandy reef island over the past 3000 years indicated by component-specific radiocarbon dating, Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L03602, doi:10.1029/2006GL028875.

Nicholls R.J., Wong P.P., Burkett V.R., Codignotto J.O., Hay J.E., McLean R.F., Ragoonaden, S. and Woodroffe, C.D. (2007) Coastal systems and low-lying areas. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Parry ML,. Canziani OF, Palutikof JP, van der Linden PJ, Hanson CE, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 315-356.

Woodroffe, C.D. (2003) Coasts, form, process and evolution. Cambridge University Press, 623pp.

Woodroffe, C.D., Beech, M.R. and Gagan, M.K. (2003) Mid-late Holocene El Nino variability in the equatorial Pacific from coral microatolls. Geophysical Research Letters 30, 1358-1361.

Kennedy, D.M. and Woodroffe, C.D. (2002) Fringing reef growth and morphology: a review. Earth Science Reviews 57, 255-277.

Searchable Publication List

Current Students

PhD students

Golam Mahabub Sarwar - Sea-level rise and the Coast of Bangladesh

Naomi Biribo - Shoreline Change on atoll islands, Kiribati

Ashishika Sharma – Foraminifera for coastal rehabilitation in Tuvalu

Thang Nguyen – Environmental vulnerability assessment of the Mekong Delta