Alisha L Steward AFSS Conference 2020

Alisha L Steward

I’ve worked as a scientist for the Queensland State Government since 2001. I’ve worked on, and led, the Ambient Biological Monitoring and Assessment Program, reporting on the health of rivers and streams throughout the state. During this time I also worked on projects using multiple indicators of aquatic ecosystem health, including macroinvertebrates, fish, turtles, frogs, macrophytes, diatoms, benthic metabolism and water quality, and I am AUSRIVAS–accredited to collect, process and identify macroinvertebrate samples and to run AUSRIVAS predictive models. I completed my PhD on dry river bed ecology in 2012 to address the growing challenge of how to assess the health of rivers when they are dry. As a result, terrestrial invertebrates are now being trialled as indicators of dry riverbed health. I have also worked on improving our knowledge of stygofauna of Queensland. I am currently working on the Q-catchments Program, a state-wide program that monitors the condition and trend of riverine ecosystems using a risk assessment framework.