Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment

• Events
• Seminars

CEO of the Australian Research Council Visit

Professor Aidan Byrne, CEO of the Australian Research Council, visited the Institute on 9 August where he toured the EucFace facility. Professor Byrne was joined by Professor Wayne McKenna (UWS, Deputy Vice Chancellor), Professor Andrew Cheetham (UWS, Pro Vice Chancellor, Research), Professor Deborah Sweeney (UWS, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor, Research - Science & Health), plus the Directors of the other UWS Institutes.

NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer Visit

Professor Mary O'Kane, NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer visited the Institute on Monday 16 July 2012 to tour the facilities including the EucFace Experiment site. Professor O'Kane was joined by Peter Leihn, (Director, Office of the Chief Scientist & Engineer), Professor Andrew Cheetham (UWS Pro Vice Chancellor, Research) and Professor Deborah Sweeney (UWS, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor, Research - Science & Health).

Launch

The University of Western Sydney's Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment was officially opened on 4 April 2012 by Senator Chris Evans, Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research.

The Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment's extensive facilities, in Richmond NSW, are dedicated to researching the impact of climate change on Australia's precious land resources - native forest ecosystems, managed forests and agricultural lands.

The Institute's research facilities were developed as a result of a $40 million grant from the Australian Government as part of its Education Investment Fund, together with funding from the University of Western Sydney.

Read more about the HIE launch and the research of the Institute in the UWS media release.

UWS Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor Visit

The Hawkesbury Insitute for the Environment (HIE) hosted the Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, Professor Peter Shergold AC, together with the Vice-Chancellor Professor Janice Reid, AM on 30 March 2012. The primary purpose of the visit was to tour our facilities, including the EucFACE site. 

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Seminars

The Institute has initiated a weekly Seminar Series as an inspiring forum where a member of staff, student, or visiting academic can present their research in a collegial atmosphere.

The HIE Seminar Committee has been established with an aim to build a stimulating seminar series with a mix of speakers from the Institute or other research centres in the greater Sydney area, alternating with invited speakers from the rest of Australia and overseas.

The idea is that the seminar series broadly covers our research themes, while also welcoming talks on (emerging) topics from related or more general science fields. Seminars will be held weekly (except during NSW school holidays) on Wednesday afternoons 3-4 pm within the Institute Lecture Theatre (HWK.L9.G.21).

The seminars will typically consist of 20-40 minute talks by one or more speakers followed by questions but can also take other forms such as a series of "speed talks" followed by a forum discussion or a workshop.

2013 Upcoming Seminars:

Wednesday 22 May 2013, 3.00 pm

• Who: Honorary Professor Ross McMurtrie, University of NSW
• Seminar title: 'I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.’ The mathematical beauty of trees.
• Where: Lecture Theatre G.21, Building L9, Hawkesbury Campus, UWS

Seminar abstract: Leaves and roots of trees perform complementary roles in resource acquisition – leaves take up carbon (C) and export a portion of it to other plant organs including roots, but they require nitrogen (N) acquired by roots to do so; roots take up N and export a portion of it to aboveground organs, but they require C acquired by leaves to do so. When that symmetry is built into forest growth models and the additional assumption is made that trees maximise their annual wood production, three surprising results emerge. One relates to canopy structure, one to root structure, and the third and prettiest result is an equation linking leaf and root function. That equation provides insight into CO2 responses of leaf and root traits such as leaf N concentration, photosynthetic rate, leaf-area index and maximum rooting depth. The three results when combined lead to a new method for scaling from leaf and root functional traits to stand productivity, and an approach for modelling C allocation that avoids the need to represent specific C allocation mechanisms.

Biographical infomation: Ross McMurtrie has spent more than 30 years working with process-based models of forests, and is author of several forest ecosystem models, including BIOMASS, G’DAY and MATE. From 2004 to 2009 he served as lead PI on the Hawkesbury Forest Experiment. He now works mainly on models of optimal plant function and is an Honorary Professor at University of NSW.

Tuesday 28 May 2013, 3.00 pm

• Who: Dr Ian Dickie, Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand
• Seminar title: Mycorrhizas in changing ecosystems
• Where: Lecture Theatre G.21, Building L9, Hawkesbury Campus, UWS

Seminar abstract: Pines are among the most problematic invasive species in the Southern Hemisphere, causing major transformations in ecosystems aboveground. The belowground effects of pine invasion can be equally transformative. In particular, pines rely on ectomycorrhizal fungi for nutrient uptake, while many of the ecosystems they invade are dominated by arbuscular mycorrhizal vegetation. Pine invasion is therefore associated with a shift in the fundamental functioning of soil ecosystems.
 
I will explore the belowground aspects of invasive ectomycorrhizal trees. First, I will highlight the mechanisms by which pines have become invasive in regions where a lack of ectomycorrhizal inoculum was once a severe limitation on tree establishment. I will then explore the direct consequences of pine invasions for carbon, soil nutrients, and biodiversity. Finally, I will test whether there really are fundamental shifts in ecosystem processes driven by mycorrhizal status, particularly in terms of plant litter quality, plant-soil feedback, and mineral and organic nutrient cycling.

Further information on Dr Dickie can be found here (opens in a new window).

Thursday 30 May, 10.00 am

• Who: Associate Professor Chengrong Chen, Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University
• Seminar title: TBA
• Where: Lecture Theatre G.21, Building L9, Hawkesbury Campus, UWS

Seminar abstract: TBA

Further information on Associate Professor Chen can be found here (opens in a new window).

Thursday 30 May 2013, 3.00 pm

• Who: Associate Professor Elise Pendall, University of Wyoming, USA
• Seminar title: Unexpected carbon cycle - climate feedbacks: The importance of rhizosphere mechanisms
• Where: Lecture Theatre G.21, Building L9, Hawkesbury Campus, UWS

Seminar abstract: A conundrum exists in carbon cycle research. Will elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide increase plant production enough to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon in soils? Or will rising temperatures stimulate decomposition rates and further amplify warming? The relative importance of these competing processes will largely determine the rate of global climate change in the coming decades. Predictive understanding is limited by a lack of empirical evidence from realistic field manipulations and detailed, mechanistic experiments. However, the potential to promote research on soil carbon cycle process feedbacks to climate change is expanding. In this talk I will present field-based evidence that elevated CO2 can actually enhance C losses from soils, while warming can suppress them. Additional data from controlled environment chambers and incubation experiments will help explain why previous expectations are too simplistic. A key mechanism missing from most models is related to priming-enhanced decomposition of soil organic matter, which appears to be related to competition for nutrients between plants and soil microbes. Our recent temperature sensitivity experiments additionally decouple the confounding influences of substrate availability and soil organic matter quality from microbial temperature responses.  While carbon accounting is critical for policy makers and managers, improving mechanistic understanding is critical for creating realistic models.

Further information on Associate Professor Pendall can be found here (opens in a new window). 

2013 talks included:

• Dr Alison Bennett, James Hutton Institute, Scotland - 'The influence of species and genetic level variation on the outcome of above-belowground interactions'
• Dr John Drake, HIE - 'Combining ecosystem and physiological ecology to study the effects of climate change on forests'
• Dr Lucas Cernusak, Future Fellow, ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment - 'Physiological responses of tropical forests to increasing [CO₂]: an overview of current knowledge and opportunities for future research'
• Dr Teresa Gimeno, HIE - 'Impact of global change on water-limited forest ecosystems: a multi scalar approach'
• Dr Steve Chapman, James Hutton Institute, Scotland - 'Lessons from a national soil survey'
• A/Prof David Warton, School of Mathematics and Statistics and the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, UNSW - 'Models, multivariate analysis and Rick Astley'
• Prof Chris Dickman, The Institute of Wildlife Research, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney - 'Population and community dynamics of Australia’s small desert mammals'
• Dr Michael G Ryan, Natural Resource Ecology Lab and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University - 'Mys-trees in Whole tree ecophysiology: Why all of our terrestrial carbon balance models are wrong and how to fix them'
• Dr Annegret Kohler, INRA-France -  'Exploring the Genome Diversity of Mycorrhizal Fungi to Understand the Evolution and Functioning of Symbiosis'
• Dr Benjamin A Sikes - University of Kansas - 'Deciphering the dirt: Understanding microbes, their role in ecosystems and potential application'
• Dr Sara Hortal-Botifoll, HIE - 'Plant-plant facilitation in arid environments: what about the role of soil microbes?'
• Professor Jizheng (Jim) He, Research Centre for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing  - 'New mechanisms of nitrification in acid soils'
• Dr Jonathan Plett, HIE - 'Dark Dealings: The In's and Out's of Power Brokering in the Rhizosphere'

2012 talks included:

• Dr Uffe Nielsen, HIE - 'The ecology of pulse events: insights from an extreme climatic event in a polar desert ecosystem'
• Dr Christopher Turbill, HIE - 'The ecological significance of mammalian dormancy: torpor, survival and life histories'
• Prof Peter Reich, HIE - 'Impacts of Biodiversity Loss Escalate Through Time as Redundancy Fades'
• Dr Ladislav Nedbal, Global Change Research Centre, Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic - 'International Networks for Global Change Research'
• A/Prof Sally Power, HIE - 'Impacts of global change on terrestrial ecosystems: Nitrogen, too much of a good thing?'
• Dr Ellen Fry, HIE - 'The DIRECT experiment, DIversity, Rainfall and Elemental Cycling in a Terrestrial ecosystem'
• Dr Víctor Resco de Dios, HIE - 'The persistence of memory - How Dalí's soft clocks help us understand photosynthetic fluxes
• A/Prof Charles Warren, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney - 'Re-thinking nitrogen nutrition of plants'
• Dr Lindsay Hutley, School of Environmental & Life Sciences, Charles Darwin University - 'Carbon and water resources of north Australia: ancient lands, new ideas'
• Prof Nina Buchmann from ETH Zürich (Institute of Agricultural Sciences) - 'The C balance of mountain forests: responses to natural and human impacts'
• Dr Robert Sharwood, HIE - 'Influence of Rubisco in C3 and C4 photosynthesis'
• Prof Mark Tjoelker, HIE - 'Plant respiration in a warming world: A runaway train?'
• Dr BriAnne Addison, School of Science and Health UWS - 'Life history immunology and maternal effects (a hodgepodge of where I’ve been and where I’m going)'
• Dr Clare McArthur, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, - 'The foraging tight-rope between predation risk and plant toxins: A matter of concentration'

• Dr Ricky Spencer, Senior Lecturer, School of Science and Health, UWS - 'Changing faster than the climate? The role of temperature in the evolution, ecology and extinction of reptiles'

• Professor James Cook, HIE - 'Figs and fig wasps: ecology and evolution of a keystone tropical symbiosis'

• Dr Eva Van Gorsel, CSIRO – Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Canberra - 'A forest holds its breath… (and how to quantify carbon and water exchange anyway)'

• Dr Margaret Barbour, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, University of Sydney - 'New laser-based stable isotope techniques to understand biosphere-atmosphere exchange'

• A/Prof Christian Stauffer, BOKU-University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria - 'Population differentiation in forest insects – the molecular ecology of two prominent bark beetle species' and Dr Deborah Kent, Honorary Associate, Macquarie University - 'Exploring the dark depths of the ambrosia beetle underworld – the Australian platypodids'

• Dr Nick Coleman, School of Molecular Bioscience, University of Sydney - 'Biodegradation of dichloroethane at the Botany Industrial Park'

• Dr Julianne O’Reilly-Wapstra, School of Plant Science, University of Tasmania - 'Eucalypt genetic influences: biotic interactions, extended effects and stability in variable environments'

• Prof Mark Blows, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland - 'Evolution of genetic variance under selection'

• Prof Evan DeLucia, School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois - 'An Ecological Perspective on the Promise and Challenges of Biofuels'

• A/Prof Charles Morris, School of Science and Health, University of Western Sydney - 'From the macro to the micro: issues around Cumberland Plain Woodland, and germination of Grevillea seeds'

• Dr Karolina Janitz, HIE - 'Next-generation sequencing services at the HIE – an overview of the operative progress within the last eight months'

• Prof Ary Hoffman, Department of Genetics and Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne - 'Persisting under climate change: can evolutionary adaptation help?'

• Dr Zhong-Hua Chen, School of Science and Health, UWS - 'Combining Electrophysiology, Molecular Biology, and Systems Modelling for Research in Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance'

• Dr Kevin Simonin, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, University of Sydney - 'Hydraulic architecture, water use efficiency and water balance: leaf to ecosystem'

• A/Prof Mike Manefield, Centre for Marine Bio-Innovation, Faculty of Science, UNSW - 'Bioremediation solutions for organochlorine contaminated aquifers in Australia'

• Professor Xavier Lambin, Professor of Ecology, The University of Aberdeen, UK - 'Trophic interactions in water vole metapopulations'

• A/Professor Angela Moles, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW - 'Global patterns in plant defence:  are tropical plants nastier?'

• Dr Lachlan Ingram, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, University of Sydney - 'Cattle moooments in the High Country – when, where and why?'

• Dr Tim Cavagnaro, Biological Sciences, Monash University - 'Soil ecology in a changing world'

Further information can be obtained by contacting a member of the HIE Seminar Committee:

• Dr Matthias Boer
• Dr Uffe Nielsen
• Dr Christopher Turbill