The following staff are available to supervise honours and masters research in the Integrated Forest Ecosystem Research (iFER).
Professor Trent Penman
Trent researches a wide array of fire risk-related issues. Topics are wide-ranging from fire behaviour to future fire risk forecasting considering human and environmental values. His work covers laboratory, field and computer simulation work.
Project topics:
- Fuel responses to fire regimes.
- Global ignition drivers
- Climate influences on fuel recovery
- Future fire regimes - implications for key species
- Protecting towns with fire management - what is the cost
A/Prof Lauren Bennett
Lauren's research focuses on understanding how ecosystems work and how we can maintain and restore healthy ecosystems. This includes understanding plant dynamics, productivity, and carbon cycles, how they are influenced by changing climates and fire regimes and identifying and testing appropriate management approaches.
Project topics:
- Exploring adaptation pathways in temperate forests.
- Approaches and evidence to support decisions about active management in forests.
- Compounded events and climate-fire-feedback effects in temperate forests.
- Quantifying and interpreting tree growth patterns in response to changing climates.
- Understanding patterns of forest windthrow after extreme storms.
A/Prof Sabine Kasel
My work is focused on empirical research that lays the foundations for an improved understanding of the key ecological processes driving the response of forest biodiversity, including threatened species, and plant community composition to compounded disturbances including altered fire regimes, changing climate, and forest management practices. This work is critical to the management of forested ecosystems for improved biodiversity outcomes and the ecosystem services they deliver.
Project topics:
- Regeneration of temperate eucalypt forests in a post-harvesting landscape. In the face of climate change and an increase in extreme and compounded disturbances, what should we be regenerating and how?
- Soil seedbanks. What does this hidden component of biodiversity tell us about plant community response to environmental change?
- Are changing forest states altering forest values and risks? Many forested areas are changing to new states (e.g., ash to non-eucalypt or mixed-species eucalypt) and there is a need to understand and predict how these new states will differ in terms of the values and services provided by existing forests.