Professor
BSc (Hons) PhD DSc
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Life Sciences Building |
| Room Reference | 270 |
| Telephone | +61 3 6226 1943 |
| Fax | +61 3 6226 2698 |
| David.Bowman@utas.edu.au |
Before taking up my chair at UTAS I was the Director of the Australian Research Council Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management at Charles Darwin University where I fostered a vibrant and highly productive research group that undertook transdisciplinary research programs designed to sustainably manage biodiversity and ecosystem services in northern Australia. I named this approach 'Wildlife and Landscape Science'.
I am now building a similar group at UTAS. Tasmania is a superb natural laboratory for ecological research and has stimulated the seminal research into the ecology and evolution of landscape fire. My research is focused on the ecology, evolution, biogeography and management of Australian forested landscapes. Specifically, I undertake pure and applied research to understand the effects of global environmental change, natural climate variability and the cessation of Aboriginal landscape burning on bushfire activity and landscape change.
My research programs, involving national and international collaborators, use an assortment of techniques, including remote sensing and geographic information analyses, stable isotopes, ecophysiological analyses, mathematical modeling, biological survey and molecular analyses.
The Environmental Change Biology lab is running 4 major research programs sustained by a diversity of funding and bolstered by collaboration with numerous other labs.
Aerobiology, bushfire smoke and human environmental health
This program involves monitoring pollen and phenological patterns, construction of an online pollen library, measuring the effects of smoke from controlled burning and wildfires on human population health and the likely impacts of ongoing global environmental change on fire weather. (Funded by ARC Linkage, ARC LIEF, Tasmania Environment Fund grants and a Weather Channel consultancy)
The environmental control and dynamics of Australian rainforest boundaries
This project is designed to understand the historical and environmental controls of rainforests across Australia. (Funded by ARC Discovery, AINSE, Holsworthy grants). These data are to be integrated into a global research program funded by Natural Environment research Council, UK (see http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/research/trobit/. As part of this program I have been awarded a NERC distinguished international scholarship to fund a sabbatical at the University of Leeds scheduled for 2010).
Tree growth and global environmental change
This project is primarily using the native conifer genus Callitris to understand the effects of climate change and land management history on tree growth (funded by ARC Discovery, AINSE, and CERF grants). The project uses a range of historical ecology techniques. The project is currently being extended into the midlands of Tasmania to understand the landscape ecology of rural tree decline and assist Greening Australia prioritise their restoration programs.
Forests and wildlife management
This project builds on my expertise in the landscape ecology of kangaroo herbivory and is funded by the Alternative to 1080 program administered by Wildlife Management Branch Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries and Water.
Research Project/s