Catherine Collier

Dr Collier is a marine ecologist specialising in tropical seagrass and coastal ecosystems, with particular expertise in environmental drivers, ecological risk and resilience. Her research integrates long-term ecological data, habitat mapping, monitoring and spatial modelling to understand where marine habitats occur, how and why they change, and their vulnerability and resilience to environmental pressures.

Her research spans the Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait, Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory and Western Australia. She provides scientific leadership to long-term monitoring of inshore Great Barrier Reef seagrass and leads research examining the effects of climate, water quality and other environmental pressures on marine habitats. This includes recent work integrating extensive field observations with spatial modelling to assess thermal risk to inshore Great Barrier Reef seagrass, alongside research on environmental thresholds and indicators of ecosystem condition and resilience.

A strong focus of her research is translating ecological information into conservation and management. Her research has contributed to Great Barrier Reef water-quality management and targets, regional and national evidence synthesis, marine protected-area planning and Sea Country management. She also develops and applies approaches using drones, remote sensing, spatial analysis and other emerging technologies to increase the scale, efficiency and accessibility of marine habitat monitoring and assessment.

Collaboration is central to Dr Collier’s research. She works extensively with Traditional Owners and Indigenous Ranger groups across northern Australia, with long-term partnerships increasingly progressing from baseline habitat mapping towards sustained monitoring and co-designed research addressing Sea Country priorities. Capability building is embedded within this work, extending from field monitoring and mapping to data processing, interpretation, spatial analysis and drone imagery. She and her team are also developing monitoring toolkits and accessible applications that support partners to undertake more of their own research, analysis and mapping.

Dr Collier’s research is increasingly extending across larger spatial scales and multiple habitats, bringing together long-term ecological information, spatial and environmental data, and established partnerships to address broader questions of tropical marine biodiversity, environmental change, risk and resilience. 

Dr Collier welcomes enquiries from prospective Honours, Masters and PhD students interested in marine ecology, environmental change and climate risk, ecological resilience, habitat monitoring and mapping, spatial conservation planning and tropical marine biodiversity.