ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
Richard Fuller is a lecturer in biodiversity and conservation at the University of Queensland. After gaining his PhD from the University of Durham in 2004, he worked at the University of Sheffield as a postdoc in Kevin Gaston’s Biodiversity and Macroecology group. He then moved to Hugh Possingham’s Spatial Ecology Lab at the University of Queensland in 2008, before forming his own research group at the beginning of 2010. Richard studies how people have affected the natural world around them, and how some of their destructive effects can best be reversed. On the flip side, he is also keen to understand whether and how people can benefit positively from experiences of biodiversity.
Conservation biologists rarely study people. This is odd, because the global environmental crisis results from human activity, and people are therefore key to solving it. There is increasing evidence from environmental psychology that human well-being increases with exposure to local biodiversity. Yet opportunities for people to experience nature are declining rapidly in the modern world, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the way people value nature, and how they act as a consequence. This points to many intriguing, but understudied, feedbacks between human values toward nature, and the extent to which people support conservation. In this seminar I will explore some of the ways in which people have affected the natural world around them, how some of these destructive effects can best be reversed, and how people benefits from experiences of nature. Among other case studies, I will show some results about permeability across protected area borders in the Indian Subcontinent, and a cost-effectiveness analysis of Australia’s protected areas. In today’s crowded planet, separating people and biodiversity (both literally and figuratively) is no longer an option.
Australian scientists have discovered a massive detached coral reef just off Cape York on the Great Barrier Reef that’s taller than the Empire State Building or the Sydney Tower. The scientists f
A new study of the Great Barrier Reef shows populations of its small, medium and large corals have all declined in the past three decades. Lead author Dr Andy Dietzel, from the ARC Centre of Excell
Scientists have found that as the world undergoes profound environmental change, identifying and protecting ‘novel’ communities of species can help prevent extinctions within vulnerable ecosystems
Scientists say a ‘portfolio’ of protected areas within marine parks such as the Great Barrier Reef can help secure sustainable fish populations. Dr Hugo Harrison from the ARC Centre of Excellen
Abstract: CHE is not a particular theory or a single approach but a collection of lines of research that address human-environmental interactions in coastal and marine systems at the local scale
Abstract: How can we care about something we never see or experience? Virtual reality has the potential to connect people with far-away places, and is an effective medium to generate empathy and sel
Abstract: When abundant, seabirds feeding in the open ocean transport large quantities of nutrients onto islands, enhancing the productivity of island fauna and flora. These nutrients can leach int
Abstract: Current-day populations of coral reef fish suffer when exposed acutely to elevated temperatures, but future warming will occur over greater timescales. Recent studies show that developmenta
Abstract: There is often a mismatch between the scales at which ecosystems are threatened by human impacts and those at which management and policy are implemented. Better understanding the scales ov
Abstract: Ocean warming and acidification are challenging the tolerance limits of scleractinian corals. However, beneficial acclimation and stress-hardening via phenotypic plasticity may be pathw
Abstract: Globally, coral reefs are under threat. Unfortunately, the rate of ecosystem degradation often surpasses the rate of generation of knowledge required to support management. Despite the consi
Partner Research Institutions
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
