Sep | 2010 | ConservationBytes.com

Humans 1, Environment 0

27 09 2010

While travelling to our Supercharge Your Science workshop in Cairns and Townsville last week (which, by the way, went off really well and the punters gave us the thumbs up – stay tuned for more Supercharge activities at a university near you…), I stumbled across an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the state of Australia.

That Commonwealth purveyor of numbers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), put together a nice little summary of various measures of wealth, health, politics and environment and their trends over the last decade. The resulting Measures of Australia’s Progress is an interesting read indeed. I felt the simple newspaper article didn’t do the environmental components justice, so I summarise the salient points below and give you my tuppence as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 10 Comments »
Tags: Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, environment, extinction, Greenhouse gas, Overfishing, statistics
Categories : Australia, carbon, conservation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, fish, fisheries, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, IUCN, logging, mammal, pollination, Red List

Supercharge your science: Blogito ergo sum

22 09 2010

Alas, I didn’t make up that wonderful expression (can anyone tell me who did?), but it was a very appropriate title for the presentation I gave today at the Supercharge Your Science workshop held at the JCU Cairns campus. For those of you who have never read any Descartes (I will forgive you – boring as philosophy gets), it comes from his well-known Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am/exist) statement. Someone cleverly adapted it to blogging.

So this post really just focuses on my component of the 5-presentation workshop extravaganza. Bill Laurance gave his two popular Interacting with the media and How to write a paper presentations (podcasted here), Mike Seyfang gave a great look at the current and future applications of social media to science, Jennifer Lappin showed how her organisation, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, really blitzed the world with top-notch media engagement, and I gave my advice on science blogging (why, what, how, do, don’t, where). The full webinar is reproduced below via Slideshare.

Where taking the show on the road and will be giving the workshop again in Townsville on Friday. I dare say too that we’ll be giving it at many other venues in Australia and perhaps overseas over the coming months. The interest seems massive.

Don’t forget to follow and engage using the associated Twitter hashtag #4ss.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: blog, James Cook University, Jennifer Lappin, journalism, media, Mike Seyfang, publication, René Descartes, science communication, scientific writing, social media, William Laurance
Categories : Australia, blog, conservation, journalism, media, science communication, scientific publishing, scientific writing, The University of Adelaide

Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss IX

19 09 2010

The latest batch of six cartoons…

See also full stock of previous ‘Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss’ compendia here.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, cartoon, climate change, Earth
Categories : cartoon, China, climate change, conservation

Global erosion of ecosystem services

14 09 2010

A few months ago I was asked to give a lecture about erosion of ecosystem services to students in the University of Adelaide‘s Issues in Sustainable Environments unit. I gave that lecture last week and just uploaded a slidecast of the presentation (with audio) today.

I’ve reproduced the lecture here for your viewing pleasure. I hope you find the 45-minute presentation useful. Note that the first few minutes cover me referring to the Biodiversity film short that I posted not too long ago.

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CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: ecosystem services, Education, environment, University of Adelaide, webinar
Categories : anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, coasts, coral reefs, deforestation, disease, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, fire, fisheries, flood, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, illegal fishing, kelp, logging, marine protected area, MPA, pollination, predator, protected area, Red List, seagrass, shark, The University of Adelaide, threatened species, water

Biodiversity: from conservation science to action

11 09 2010

About 3 weeks ago I blogged about Guillaume Chapron‘s vision to notch up conservation implementation around the globe. After that little piece Guillaume invited me and a few others (including one of Australia’s own conservation gurus, Hugh Possingham) to co-author a piece on the new Nature Network‘s ‘Soapbox Science‘ blog. The Soapbox Science blog is:

“… a new group blog, covering the whole of science. Over the coming months, we’ll be inviting researchers from all over the world to write one-off posts. The subjects may be controversial, opinionated, speculative, or just plain interesting, and may be written by any scientist with something to say.”

We managed to grab the first post in this endeavour, so I reproduce it here for ConservationBytes.com readers. Enjoy!

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Ecosystem degradation and species extinction rates are steadily accelerating, mainly as a result of unbounded human population growth, extravagant consumption patterns and associated land and sea degradation. Researchers are pushing science forward in an attempt to reverse the biodiversity ‘crisis’. In their papers they systematically stress how their results can serve to enhance conservation management or implement new corrective actions to reduce biodiversity loss. Still, they are becoming increasingly frustrated that their published research is having little, if any impact in halting the ongoing sixth mass extinction. Everything remains purely theoretical and is not leading to direct action. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, Biodiversity 100, environment, Natural environment, sustainability
Categories : biodiversity, blog, conservation, conservation biology, ecosystem, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, minimum viable population, planning

Supercharge Your Science

10 09 2010

In a little under two weeks I’ll be co-running a workshop of the same name at James Cook University at both the Cairns and Townsville campuses.

With me will be super-scientist, media-guru and anti-deforestation advocate, Distinguished Professor Bill Laurance (who you might remember came to Adelaide earlier this year and gave some great talk), ex-Microsoft man and social media guru (and self-entitled ‘geezer’), Mike Seyfang, and the Media Coordinator for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Jennifer Lappin.

Should be heaps of fun (and hopefully highly educational). Basically we’ll be preaching to aspiring and well-established researchers in many areas about how they can maximise the impact of their scientific research, in terms of media, education, outreach and policy.

I’ll be talking about science blogging (and blogging science!), other social media uses in science, and some of my personal experiences with ConservationBytes.com. I haven’t yet finalised my presentation, but I think it’ll be insightful.

Here’s the official blurb for the 1-day workshop: Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: blogging, James Cook University, media, policy, science, social media
Categories : blog, conservation, science communication, scientific publishing, scientific writing

Student opportunities with Australian Wildlife Conservancy

8 09 2010

A colleague of mine, Dr. Matt Hayward of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), asked me to circulate some Honours, MSc and PhD student project opportunities. I thought this would be best done by publishing the call as a blog post.

The AWC is a non-government, non-profit organisation dedicated to the conservation of Australia’s wildlife and their habitats. AWC’s south-east region has a team of 7 ecologists who work closely with the land managers to carry out AWC’s Conservation and Science Program. The Science Program includes strategic research designed to help us manage threatened species more effectively. Several of these research projects are suitable for Honours, Masters or PhD projects.

This prospectus provides an outline of the student projects that are currently on offer in the south-east region. The majority of the projects are based on one sanctuary, although some aspects of the research may be done on other AWC sanctuaries and/or government conservation areas.

AWC will partially support these projects with equipment, staff time and expertise, and accommodation. In some cases, AWC may also provide some vehicle use and office facilities onsite at The Scotia Field Research Centre. We anticipate these projects will be collaborative efforts with input from students, academics and AWC staff, with appropriate acknowledgement for all involved. These projects are offered on a first in, first approved basis and have been offered to multiple universities.

More details on the sanctuaries and AWC are available here. If you are keen do one of these projects, please contact Matt Hayward and we will then formulate a research proposal and research agreement. Eight project descriptions follow. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, environment, Honours, Matt Hayward, MSc, opportunities, PhD, research, Scotia Sanctuary, South Australia, student, study, wildlife
Categories : Australia, cat, conservation, dingo, fox, invasive species, monitoring, predator, protected area, research, South Australia, southern Australia, threatened species

The lost world – freshwater biodiversity conservation

6 09 2010

Even the most obtuse, right-wing, head-in-the-sand, consumption-driven, anti-environment yob would at least admit that they’ve heard of forest conservation, the plight of whales (more on that little waste of conservation resources later) and climate change. Whether or not they believe these issues are important (or even occurring) is beside the point – the fact that this particular auto-sodomist I’ve described is aware of the issues is at least testament to growing concern among the general populace.

But so many issues in conservation science go unnoticed even by the most environmentally aware. Today’s post covers just one topic (I’ve covered others, such as mangroves and kelp forests) – freshwater biodiversity.

The issue is brought to light by a paper recently published online in Conservation Letters by Thieme and colleagues entitled Exposure of Africa’s freshwater biodiversity to a changing climate.

Sure, many people are starting to get very worried about freshwater availability for human consumption (and this couldn’t be more of an issue in Australia at the moment) – and I fully agree that we should be worried. However, let’s not forget that so many species other than humans depend on healthy freshwater ecosystems to persist, which feed back in turn to human benefits through freshwater filtering, fisheries production and arable soil accumulation.

Just like for the provision of human uses (irrigation, direct water consumption, etc.), a freshwater system’s flow regime is paramount for maintaining its biodiversity. If you stuff up the flow regime too much, then regardless of the amount of total water available, biodiversity will suffer accordingly.

Image by James Marvin Phelps (mandj98) via Flickr

Thieme and colleagues focus specifically on African freshwater systems, but the same problems are being seen worldwide (e.g., Australia’s Murray-Darling system, North America’s Colorado River system). And this is only going to get worse as climate change robs certain areas of historical rainfall. To address the gap in knowledge, the authors used modelled changes in mean annual runoff and discharge to determine fish species affected by 2050.

The discharge/runoff results were: Read the rest of this entry »