Forest thinning is a good way to lower the risk of fire, but there are potential downsides.
- Honorary Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne
Relatively little has changed since the Black Saturday tragedy. It is as though Australia suffers amnesia when it comes to bushfire preparedness.
In the years after Black Saturday, climate adaptation research was in full swing, creating knowledge in how to deal with the risks. But a series of funding cuts have left this research in decline.
Forest loss has halved over the past 30 years according to the 2015 Global Forest Resources Assessment, released yesterday.
There are more than three trillion trees worldwide, but that’s only half as many were around at the start of human civilisation according to new research.
A large new national park might sound like the best way to protect the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum. But it won’t do anything to save possums from the major threat of bushfire.
The 74,000 hectares of Tasmania’s controversial World Heritage extension will not be delisted as requested by the Tasmanian and federal governments. At the meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee…
Recent floods in the UK have awoken the country to the possibly severe impacts of climate change. Like many other parts of the world, including Australia, the UK will see rising temperatures and increasing…
Rod Keenan: What do you see as the challenges of adapting to climate change in the UK? Lord Krebs: In the UK we’ve done what we call the Climate Change Risk Assessment, which is a formal analysis of all…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott this week told a timber industry dinner that he doesn’t think national parks should be a growth industry: “We have quite enough national parks. We have quite enough locked up…
As Melbourne labours through its second heatwave this month, it is becoming clear that these events take a heavy toll. Health, energy consumption, transport, infrastructure, agriculture and other natural…
Nearly 80% of land in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak has been impacted by undocumented logging and forests clearing operations, a new study has found. The impacts included building new roads…
With increasing global greenhouse gas emissions, and no clear internationally-agreed path for emission reductions, we are faced with a global climate that will be at least two degrees warmer than today…
Forests spark emotional debates in Australia. Much of the rhetoric is about saving “the last of Tasmania’s wild forests” or how we must “stop logging in Australian native forests”. Australian forests…
The Australian government’s plan for a Clean Energy Future contains a number of measures aimed at supporting farmers and land managers to provide emissions offsets. The plan consists of a mix of market-based…
The Final Report of the 2011 Garnaut Climate Change Review made a strong case for including land based reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and biosequestration activities in a carbon pricing scheme…
Carbon farming - or biosequestration - seems to be the only climate change mitigation measure that both sides of politics can agree on. But its effectiveness may be sorely overstated. Biosequestration…
Australians, human and animal, have a good history of adapting to change. But how best to deal with a changing climate is emerging as a significant and often contentious policy challenge. It’s hard to…
Contact Rod for
- General
- Media request
- Speaking request
- Consulting / Advising
- Research collaboration
- Research supervision
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Website
- Article Feed
- ORCID
- Joined
