Dr Jeffrey Parr BA(UNE) BAppSc(Hons)(SCU) PhD(SCU) Jeff is a ARC Postdoctoral Fellow; he is currently involved in research within the Centre for Geoarchaeology and Palaeoenvironmental Research the Centre for Ecotechnology and Southern Cross Geoscience. Jeff’s unique area of research is plant silica and its relationships to soil carbon sequestration, plant strength and resistance. Plant silica bodies’ known as phytoliths, plantstones or plant opal that are formed in and around the cell wall of many plant species replicating the cell wall shape and encapsulating the inner organic content. These silica bodies are deposited into the soil when a plant dies and are highly resistant to decomposition. This makes them very useful diagnostic tools for forensic investigations, palaeoenvironmental research including palaeo-diets and vegetation histories. Planstones play an important encapsulating carbon and this silica component has been linked to regulatory processes of transpiration rates, drought tolerance and other resist qualities in plants. Jeff’s research encompasses all of these areas. For further information about any of these publications please contact the author.
Journal articles
AMS dating of ancient plant residues from experimental stone tools: a pilot study (with Andrea Yates, Andrew M. Smith, Anja Scheffers, and Renaud Joannes-Boyau), Journal of Archaeological Science (2013)
Residue analyses on stone artefacts have contributed to resolving functional questions in stone tool research....
Phytolith occluded carbon and silica variability in wheat cultivars (with Leigh A. Sullivan), Plant and Soil (2011)
Phytolith Occluded Carbon (PhytOC) has recently been demonstrated to be an important long-term terrestrial carbon...
Carbon bio-sequestration within the phytoliths of economic bamboo species (with Leigh A. Sullivan, Bihua Chen, Gongfu Ye, and Zheng Wiepeng), Global Change Biology (2010)
The rates of carbon bio-sequestration within silica phytoliths of the leaf litter of 10 economically...
Archaeobotany in Australia and New Guinea: practice, potential and prospects (with Tim Denham, Jennifer Atchison, Jeremy Austin, Sheahan Bestel, Doreen Bowdery, Alison Crowther, Nic Dolby, Andrew Fairbairn, Judith Field, Amanda Kennedy, Carol J. Lentfer, Carney Matheson, Sue Nugent, Matiu Prebble, Gail Robertson, Jim Specht, Robin Torrence, Huw Barton, Richard Fullagar, Simon Haberle, Mark Horrocks, Tara Lewis, and Peter Matthews), Australian Archaeology (2009)
Archaeobotany is the study of plant remains from archaeological contexts. Despite Australasian research being at...
Human adaptive responses to catastrophic landscape disruptions during the Holocene, Numundo, PNG (with William E. Boyd, Vicki Harriott, and Robin Torrence), Geographical Research (2009)
Prehistoric land use and social activity in West New Britain, PNG, are well documented, although...
Book chapters
Fires impact on an acidic peatland in northeastern NSW: implications for the interpretation of fire histories, pyrite formation and loss of organic carbon (with Geoffrey Kerr, J Arthur, and Kathryn H. Taffs), Interdisciplinary nuances in phytolith and other microfossil studies (2008)
Geochemical analysis of fragments of burnt and impressed cay (with William E. Boyd), The origins of the civilization of Ankor: Excavation of Noen U-Loke and Non Muang Kao (2007)
Morphological characteristics observed in the leaf phytolith of select gymnosperms of Eastern Australia (with Loraine Watson), Plants, people and places: Recent studies in phytolithic analysis (2007)
Conference publications
Raman, infrared and XPS study of bamboo phytoliths after chemical digestion (with Kym M. Watling, Llew Rintoul, Christopher L. Brown, and Leigh A. Sullivan), GeoRaman 2010, 9th International Conference on the Application of Raman Spectroscopy to the Earth Science, published in Spectrochimica Acta: Part A Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy (2011)
Raman, infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies have been used to examine the effect of various...
Encapsulation of a long-lived carbon fraction in phytoliths (with Leigh A. Sullivan and Robert Quirk), Meeting the Challenges of Sugar Crops and Integrated Industries in Developing Countries: Proceedings of International Sugar (IS 2008) Conference (2008)
Deposition of plant silica, a long-lived soil fraction containing easily quantifiable carbon (with Leigh A. Sullivan), Proceedings International Symposium on Organic Matter Dynamics in Agro-Ecosystems (2007)
Green geosequestration: secure carbon sequestration via plant silica biomineralisation (with Leigh A. Sullivan), Awards Ceremony Speeches and Abstracts of the 17th Annual V. M. Goldschmidt Conference (2007)
Management of silica biomineralisation in crops to enhance soil carbon sequestration in agro-ecosystems (with Leigh A. Sullivan), Proceedings International Symposium on Organic Matter Dynamics in Agro-Ecosystems (2007)
Reports