I’m Technical Manager and responsible for the operation of the Institute’s field-based climate change facilities including CO2 /climate controlled whole tree chambers (WTC) and associated eucalypt plantation, a Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment in native woodland, Rain-out Shelters and an Eddy Covariance Flux site.

My research interest focuses on the landscape ecology and management of fire-prone environments. I am particularly interested in the biophysical basis for spatial variation in current and future fire regimes, and in the mechanisms and feedbacks by which fire may mediate, reinforce or constrain impacts of changing climate, [CO2] or land use on ecosystem functions and services such as regulation of water and carbon fluxes or biodiversity conservation.

I combine field and laboratory experiments to answer questions at the ecosystem level at the plant-soil-microbe interface. One area is rhizosphere mediation of soil organic matter dynamics, including decomposition and formation, as affected by climate change factors (including elevated CO2, warming and water stress). Another mechanisms of impact of water stress and water availability on carbon cycling, stoichiometric relations and microbial communities in soil and potential feedbacks to climate.

My research is focused on physiological mechanisms plants use to respond to global climate change factors, principally elevated CO2 and climate warming, but also the effect of nutrient availability (both nitrogen and phosphorus) on the CO2 response.

Tree Nutrition and Physiology; Global Change Biology; Ecological Physiology; Plant Physiology; Ecosystem Adaptation to Climate Change; Ecosystem Adaptation in Australia; Ecosystem Adaptation in the World; Forest and Woodland Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity

My primary interest is plant conservation, particularly under climate change. My main research areas are conservation biology, ecology, plant functional traits, biogeography, macroecology, species adaptation to climate change and global change biology.

Senior Technical Coordinator, Sustainability & Environmental Science,
Sustainability & Environmental Sciences TRTS.

My research is focused on understanding how environmental change impacts nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning and how this affects productivity and sustainability of soils. Working across natural, agricultural and managed ecosystems, she aims to improve understanding of how factors such as climate change and land management impact microbial-mediated nutrient transformations, and how this feeds back to ecosystem functioning.

Senior Engineering Technician at FACE. Sustainability & Environmental Sciences TRTS

I’m an animal ecologist with a particular interest in animal behaviour, navigation and spatial ecology. My research focus on navigation, involving a combination of high resolution tracking and experimental manipulation to investigate the sensory basis of navigation. Spatial ecology, identifying natural patterns of movement including foraging and migration and cooperative breeding, examining parental investment and helping behaviour.

My research focuses on how plants, especially forests, respond to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate change. I work at the interface between experiments and models: my aim is to develop evidence-based models of how ecosystem productivity, water use and species composition will be affected by global change, and to do so I work closely with a number of experimental teams world-wide to test and improve ecosystem models.

My research focus on plant-animal interactions, chemical ecology and the causes and consequences of variation in plant chemistry. I am particularly interested in the chemical, nutritional and physiological ecology of Australian marsupials, like the koala, that feed on Eucalyptus. How is climate and landscape change altering the ecology of these interactions?