Postgraduate
BSc, MSc
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Life Sciences Building |
| Room Reference | 270 |
| Telephone | +61 3 6226 1944 |
| Fax | +61 3 6226 2698 |
| parkert0@utas.edu.au |
Clay is originally from Long Island, New York but has spent much of the past 10 years overseas or in Hawaii. He holds a BSc in Biology from the University of Denver and an MSc in Botany from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Clay has conducted ecological research in a variety of habitats across the US and Canada as well as tropical forests in Mexico and Micronesia, mountainous desert of the Sinai, and mixed forest-savannas in India and Guyana. Before coming to Tasmania, he worked as a Field Botanist for the National Tropical Botanical Garden collecting propagules in some of the world's most rugged terrain for restoration and rare plant conservation on the island of Kauai and other Pacific islands.
I'm fascinated by the interrelationships between "natural" systems and people. As has been elsewhere stated, "Most of the world's biological diversity exists, and will continue to exist, in landscapes occupied and utilized by humans." Ecology is an incredibly useful tool with which to understand this dynamic relationship and help manage the ecosystems we influence and upon which we ultimately depend. Most of the previous projects I've worked on have examined these relationships at the population and community level. However, I am interested in exploring methods which allow us to understand the ecological implications of management practices at larger spatial scales and across complex habitat mosaics.
I'm currently developing a dissertation topic on the ecology of tropical savannas in Australia's Northern Territory. With the cooperation of Kakadu National Park the the Western Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Project (WALFA), I'll be examining the variability of fire regimes and the utility of Callitris intratropica as an indicator of effective management and ecosystem health on the Arnhem Plateau.