Catherine Lovelock
Catherine Lovelock is a marine ecologist and academic writer whose work for The Conversation centres on how mangrove forests and other coastal ecosystems shape, and are shaped by, climate change and human activity. Her coverage links detailed ecological processes - sediment accretion, nutrient loading and sea-level rise - to larger questions of coastal protection, blue carbon and climate mitigation. She draws on decades of research on mangrove dynamics to produce evidence-led analysis that keeps the focus on what is happening in coastal wetlands worldwide and what that means for policy and practice.
Mangrove forests, carbon and coastal resilience
A consistent thread in Lovelock’s writing is the role of mangrove forests in storing carbon and defending coastlines, and how those functions are changing over time.
In her coverage of global mangrove trends, she sets short-term news about forests “bouncing back” against long records of change, drawing on work that has assessed the state of mangroves worldwide and their contribution to coastal protection and climate goals. Her research portfolio includes studies of carbon sequestration through vertical accretion of sediments in mangrove forests and saltmarshes, which she uses to explain why these systems matter in climate accounting and why different wetland plant communities can sequester carbon at very different rates.
She also brings in results on soil respiration and belowground carbon allocation in mangroves to show how carbon moves through these ecosystems and where management or disturbance can shift the balance. Across these pieces, Lovelock tends to emphasise clear mechanisms - how sediment builds up, how plant communities influence carbon storage - and ties them directly to the resilience of coastal regions to storms, erosion and sea-level rise.
Sea-level rise, nutrient stress and ecosystem vulnerability
Lovelock’s work gives equal weight to the pressures that can undermine mangrove resilience, particularly rising seas, nutrient enrichment and changing sediment supply. In her coverage of research on the vulnerability of Indo-Pacific mangrove forests to sea-level rise, she explains that a large fraction of studied sites lack the sediment inputs needed to keep pace with projected sea-level increases, and that some forests could be submerged within decades.
She uses these findings to illustrate how regional differences in tidal range and sediment supply influence which mangroves can persist and which are at high risk, contrasting areas with relatively positive outlooks against those facing rapid loss. Nutrient enrichment is another recurring focus: Lovelock has reported on work showing that increased nutrients from river runoff and urban or industrial sources initially boost mangrove growth but shift biomass towards shoots at the expense of roots, leaving trees more vulnerable to drought and high salinity. Her discussion of this research highlights nutrient-driven mortality as a major threat to nearshore coastal ecosystems, adding to more familiar problems such as algal blooms and coral reef degradation.
Alongside these stressors, she examines phenomena such as mangrove “ghost forests” and their links to shifting sediment and hydrology, framing them both as symptoms of ecosystem vulnerability and, in some cases, as openings for other coastal habitats like seagrass.
Policy, restoration and climate solutions
Beyond diagnosis, Lovelock spends substantial effort on how policy, management and restoration can change the trajectory of coastal ecosystems.
In co-authored pieces on clashing environmental policies, she shows how misaligned rules and incentives across sectors - such as land use, conservation and infrastructure - combine to produce poor outcomes on the ground, even when individual policies are well intentioned. Her work on mangrove restoration takes a similarly practical angle, addressing the challenges of re-establishing mangrove forests at scale and the reasons why many restoration projects fail despite significant investment. She draws on research that evaluates the effectiveness of mangrove plantations for climate change mitigation, including case studies from Bangladesh and other regions, to illustrate where restoration can deliver meaningful blue carbon benefits and where it does not.
These pieces pay close attention to how ecological realities - sediment dynamics, freshwater availability, species selection - interact with governance and financing, giving readers a clear sense of what robust restoration requires. Lovelock often writes in collaboration with other scientists and interdisciplinary teams, and her articles weave together ecology, climate science and policy analysis rather than treating scientific findings in isolation.
The result is coverage that moves quickly from mechanisms to levers, identifying concrete ways that better policy alignment, smarter restoration and recognition of blue carbon value can improve outcomes for both coastal ecosystems and climate objectives.
4 more environment journalists.
Adelaide Lang
Adelaide Lang combines climate reporting with courtroom and Indigenous-focused journalism. She reports for The Daily Telegraph, with work also appearing in The Canberra Times, and contributes guest pieces to National Indigenous Times. Her environment coverage focuses on climate-threatened islands, community resilience and how policy decisions affect people facing direct environmental risks. She follows local campaigns, adaptation efforts and political pressure while keeping the human effects clear. Lang also covers court proceedings involving public officials, including the trial of State MP Gareth Ward over historical sexual and indecent assault charges. Her reporting examines how allegations are tested in court and how the justice system handles accusations against people in power. With more than five years in digital media and courtroom reporting, she writes clear, factual accounts of events, legal processes and their consequences.
Ashleigh McMillan
Ashleigh McMillan is a breaking news reporter at The Age. She stands out for covering the environment through public events, infrastructure and everyday city life. Her reporting tracks how protests, policy decisions and sudden incidents change routines, public safety and the spaces people move through. She covers fast-moving stories across Victoria, with a focus on community tension, access and the lived effects of official decisions. Her work includes protests and public demonstrations, crime and courts, transport and ticketing changes, traffic experiments, weather, and environmental conditions in the city. She reports on what people see and feel on the ground, with attention to victims, commuters, residents and the practical consequences of legal and infrastructure decisions.
Bareket Falk
Bareket Falk uses environmental stories to show how growing bodies handle physical stress, especially heat, during exercise. She is a pediatric exercise physiologist and kinesiology professor whose work focuses on how children, adolescents and adults respond to activity across growth and development. She writes evidence-led explainers for The Conversation that test assumptions about children’s vulnerability and turn decades of exercise science into clear, practical guidance. Her core piece looks at how children and adults cope with extreme heat, walking through basic thermoregulation and challenging the idea that children are automatically more fragile. Her journalism draws directly on research into blood flow, sweating, body size and growth, keeping technical detail tight and translating findings into concrete behaviours such as pacing activity, seeking shade and hydration. She is interested in how physical activity interacts with maturation, body composition and recovery, and uses data to check myths about kids’ risk.
Bec Lorrimer
Bec Lorrimer is a visual journalist and picture editor who tells environment stories through photography and careful image selection at the Guardian. She works at the intersection of climate coverage and visual editing, using picture-led formats to show how global heating and other environmental pressures play out in everyday life. Her environment beat centres on picture galleries that track the lived experience of climate extremes, including record high temperatures in South Korea, with in pictures sequences that foreground the scale of global heating over text-led analysis. She also contributes to monthly roundups of the strongest photos and human-centred features such as a nursing home story, focusing on people and places under pressure. As a global visual editor and assistant picture editor on international fronts, she selects images across environment, politics, culture and general news, drawing on her background as a photographer, video director and photo producer.