ARC Research Network
Discovering the past and present to shape the future: networking environmental sciences for understanding and managing Australian biodiversity (Environmental Futures Network)
This network was a 5 year ARC funded program (2005-2010) aimed to bring together specialists with a wide range of research interests, to pool their ideas and expertise to allow us to detemine how to best describe Australia's current biodiversity and the history leading up to this. Our geographical limit is the Australian continent, and includes marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments with a strong focus on using the past to explain the present.
The network was based around three main themes: The impact on biodivesity of -
- global climate change, past and future
- geo-historical (non-climatic) processes
- the arrival and spread of humans
The Network aimed to interact directly with land managers to both inform research directions and to impart useful information for management planning. We believe this will lead to an internationally recongnised multi-disciplinary approach to the major problems confronting both Australia and the world in coming years.
This network is the result of the merger of four seed-funded networks with the following titles:
- Understanding the Australian Ecosystem: integrating contemporary and historical perspectives on the evolution, ecology and management of Australia's living resources
- Innovative science for sustainable use of marine biodiversity goods and services
- Sustainable Futures through understanding past human responses to environmental change
- Networking environmental science to achieve integrated management of Australian terrestrial biodiversity in an era of environmental change