Bushfires, Feedbacks And The Future

Professor Bowman's talk will outline how fire is a complicated ecosystem process because of numerous feedbacks with the biophysical and human environment. In this talk Professor Bowman describes a number of fire-ecology feedbacks, and considers what this might mean for the future of natural systems and fire management in a hotter and more flammable world.

Professor David Bowman holds a research chair in Environmental Change Biology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Tasmania. The primary motivation for his research is understanding the effects of global environmental change, natural climate variability and Aboriginal landscape burning on bushfire activity and landscape change across the Australian continent. After completing his PhD in forest ecology and silviculture at the University of Tasmania in 1984, he spent two decades undertaking full time research in rainforest and savanna ecology throughout northern Australia. Bowman received a DSc in 2002 from University of Tasmania, and has received travelling fellowships from the Australian Academy of Science, as well as Harvard, Kyoto, Leeds and Arizona universities.