Ecology odyssey
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Ian
Lowe AO is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society and
former Head of the School of Science at Griffith University. He holds
a Bachelor of Science from the University of New South Wales and a
PhD from the University of York. His principal research interest is
the way policy decisions influence use of science and technology,
especially in the fields of energy and environment. He is the author
or co-author of five books, 10 Open University books, 30 book chapters
and about 400 other publications or conference papers. He also writes
regular columns for New Scientist and several other publications,
as well as contributing frequently to radio and TV programs. Professor Hugh Possingham's mission is to put environmental problems on a sound mathematical basis. He is the new face of ecology in Queensland, both literally and metaphorically.
His spectacular career already includes a Rhodes Scholarship, an Oxford doctorate, postdoctoral work at Stanford, academic appointments at three other Australian universities and the inaugural Fenner Medal for the Australian Academy of Science.
Professor Possingham left his position of Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Adelaide to take up a unique joint appointment in July 2000. He has a split appointment between two discipline areas: mathematics, as well as zoology and entomology.
In February this year, The Ecology Centre was formed with Professor Possingham as its foundation Director. He believes passionately that we will only be able to interact responsibly with the complex natural systems of Australia when we give that task a secure mathematical basis.
"Without models, we can't predict, and without predictions, we can't manage," he says. "The traditional theoretical view of plant and animal populations was that they behaved in a uniform way like gas particles in a jar, but this wasn't the case at all. Their movements in space and time are highly complex? with advances in computing, we can now begin to predict their future behaviour."
He applies this approach to a wide range of complex problems including the dynamics of kangaroo populations in the arid zone, the best way to use biological control agents, design of reserve areas on land and at sea, the viability of koala populations in modern fragmented landscapes and the behaviour of small creatures living around mound springs in the arid zone.
These elegant studies are obviously relevant to the huge challenge of living in a sustainable way in this complex country. As Professor Possingham says: "If computing modelling had been available 100 years ago, many of our current environmental problems such as salinity wouldn't have happened. We would have been able to predict the effects on the landscape of actions such as tree-clearing."
I am not sure I share his confidence that the problems would not have happened. After all, we now know enough about global climate change for it to be clear to the scientific community that it requires urgent global action, but our politicians still give it less attention than GST on fundraising dinners.
Professor Possingham's analysis does, however, allow us to eliminate the mistakes that were made in the past simply through ignorance of the complex dynamics of natural systems. That will be a huge advance.
The 2000 Friibergh workshop on sustainability science concluded that most of the world's serious environmental problems resulted from that sort of ignorance. We can see examples all around us: expansion of sugar production in ignorance of the effects on both the Great Barrier Reef and terrestrial biodiversity, extraction of increasing amounts of water from stressed river systems for new irrigation ventures in ignorance of the impacts on the riverine ecology, increasing urban air pollution resulting from encouraging car-use by building more roads, and the measures that have produced the salinity crisis, large-scale clearing of dry land and inefficient irrigation of agricultural soils.
These sorts of problems can all be prevented. To manage anything, as Professor Possingham says, you have to be able to measure its past and model its future. So his mission is to put these sorts of issues on a solid basis of measurement and modelling.
Some of his studies have led directly to possible techniques for natural resource managers. He analysed the effects of biological control agents with Assistant Professor Katriona Shea of the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara. They found there was plenty of room for improvement; one estimate was that the success rate of attempts to control insect pests was as low as 35 percent.
Their modelling showed that the best strategy depended on the state of the system. If the pest was known to be well-established on a few sites, large-scale release of the control agent at those sites was the best strategy. For all other cases, Assistant Professor Shea and Professor Possingham recommended a mixed strategy of a varied pattern of releases, with careful monitoring to determine the effectiveness of the control agent.
Other recent projects that caught my eye included mathematical methods for identifying the best pattern of reserve networks to protect biodiversity by conserving habitat, and a test of a model used to predict the viability of remnant populations. These are serious practical problems for contemporary Australia, where loss and fragmentation of habitat are driving a wave of extinctions of native species.
Professor Possingham is also working on a project with the Australian Koala Foundation and UQ's Dr Clive McAlpine to develop planning strategies for the koala, a national icon whose future is seriously threatened.
Under Professor Possingham's direction The Ecology Centre is also working on fire regimes to preserve areas of high cultural significance on Fraser Island and a project to understand the ecology of another national symbol, the kangaroo. The aim is to develop techniques which will allow land managers and conservation agencies to make informed decisions about the effects of rainfall on growth of grass and hence the scale of kangaroo populations which can be supported.
Professor Possingham's research overlaps with the work of many other academics at The University of Queensland: zoologists like Professor Gordon Grigg, botanists like Dr David Lamb, mathematicians like Professor Kevin Burrage, entomologists like Dr Myron Zalucki and geographical scientists like Dr Stuart Phinn. He is optimistic that the work can make a real difference.
"Queensland is still a growing state and I believe its landscape can be changed for the better," he says. His work is providing the sound scientific base to turn that hope into reality.
