Professor Bunn is Director of the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University in Brisbane. His major research interests are in the ecology and management of river and wetland systems and he has published widely on this topic.
Professor Bunn has extensive experience working with international and Australian government agencies on water resource management issues. He is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee for the Global Water System Project and Deputy Chair of the Scientific Expert Panel for the Healthy Waterways Partnership in Southeast Queensland and, in 2008, was appointed as a National Water Commissioner.
In 2007, Professor Bunn was awarded the Australian Society for Limnology Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to research and management of Australia's inland waters.
More information about Professor Stuart Bunn .
Mark Stafford Smith is currently Science Director for CSIRO's Climate Adaptation Flagship, as well as continuing a smaller role leading the Science of Desert Living project with Desert Knowledge CRC (DKCRC). He is based with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Canberra. Mark has had extensive program, project and staff management experience including 5 years as Program Leader of CSIRO's Centre for Arid Zone Research in Alice Springs, and then as the inaugural CEO of the DKCRC, a partnership among 28 organisations that he was instrumental in establishing in 2002. He lived in Alice Springs for 21 years, maintaining international connections through the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme for understanding global change worldwide on whose Science Committee he sits as a UNESCO-appointed vice-chair, among other activities. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Lake Eyre Basin Ministerial Forum. He was an inaugural winner of the NT Research and Innovation Awards in 2005 for his contribution to desert knowledge. He has worked in desert areas around the world since 1975, and in Australian rangelands since 1980. He regards himself as a systems ecologist with a particular interest in arid social ecological systems, but has worked across many sectors and scales of systems during his career. The subject of his forthcoming book, Dry Times, is how desert dwellers deal with uncertainty, scarce resources and remoteness, and what this can teach a world facing climate change.
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Dr Bill Young leads the Healthy Water Ecosystems Theme of the CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country National Flagship. He is an environmental hydrologist with wide experience in environmental flows research and management and river health assessments, both in Australia and internationally. Recently, he lead the Murray-Darling Basin Sustainable Yields project which investigated the likely consequences of climate change for water availability and water use in the Murray-Darling Basin and which was awarded the 2008 CSIRO Chairman's Medal. Bill is currently also a member of the Scientific Reference Panel for the Living Murray Initiative and a member of the Governing Board for the Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre.
More information about Dr Bill Young .
Geoffrey Lawrence is Professor of Sociology and Head, School of Social Science, at The University of Queensland in Brisbane. Prior to his appointment he was Foundation Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Regional Development at Central Queensland University. He has worked in the area of rural and environmental sociology for some 30 years. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Life Member of the Fitzroy Basin Association. Among his recent books are: Supermarkets and Agri-food Supply Chains (2007), Rural Governance (2007), Going Organic (2006) and Environment, Society and Natural Resource Management (2001).
More information about Professor Geoffrey Lawrence .
Dr Tara Martin is a research scientist with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and adjunct Professor with University of British Columbia, Canada and University of Queensland, Australia. She is a pioneer in the field of optimal conservation resource allocation, using decision theory to develop frameworks for making more efficient and effective conservation decisions with respect to designing conservation areas, conserving migratory species, managing invasive species, recovering endangered species, and designating Critical Habitat for endangered species. For the past 10 years, Dr Martin has been researching the complex interactions between livestock grazing systems and the persistence of native bird and plant species assemblages throughout Australia.
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Professor Richard Kingsford heads the Australian Rivers and Wetlands Lab at the University of New South Wales. He was a member of the Cooper Creek Catchment Committee for more than five years and a member of the Lake Eyre Basin Community Advisory Committee before joining the Scientific Advisory Panel.
Professor Kingsford is an internationally recognised expert on the ecology of waterbirds, rivers and wetland systems in the arid and semi-arid zone of Australia, and the ecological impacts of river regulation. He has undertaken research on the Cooper Creek within the Lake Eyre Basin and similar systems in the Murray Darling Basin, and was instrumental in promoting environmental flow regimes to protect dependent ecological values in the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin.
Professor Kingsford is widely recognised and respected by the community of the Lake Eyre Basin for his work on improving community access to, and understanding of, scientific research activities. Professor Kingsford has had a long history of involvement in the Lake Eyre Basin community process, which led to the development of the Lake Eyre Basin Intergovernmental Agreement.
He is a member of the Australia Government's Environmental Water Scientific Advisory Committee. He received a Eureka Award in 2001 for his research on arid zone wetlands and a second Eureka Award in 2008 for his promotion of science.
More information about Professor Richard Kingsford .
The Lake Eyre Basin Agreement is implemented by the Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, and the Queensland, South Australian and Northern Territory Governments
Last Updated: Monday, 22-Jun-2009 10:43:43 EST
