On 10 September, Laureate Professor David Keith from UNSW won the Australian Institute of Botanical Science Eureka Prize for Excellence in Botanical Science.
The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are the country’s most comprehensive national science awards, honouring excellence across the areas of research and innovation, leadership, science engagement, and school science.
Prof Keith’s long-term work involves a major international collaboration to develop the world’s first Global Ecosystem Typology – a framework for classifying, describing, conserving and restoring the world’s ecosystems.
Adopted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the typology has been instrumental in formulating effective conservation strategies and is helping to maintain plant diversity in the face of increasing environmental change.
Prof Keith is also Node Leader with the BNHRC, and the Global Ecosystem Typology - which identified the world's fire-prone ecosystems - connects with the Centre through the current ‘Fire Management for Ecological Communities’ research project.
The project aim is to develop fire management guidelines for exemplar Threatened Ecological Communities (TECs), taking the science beyond just species-specific responses to fire.
The research is also a continuation of Prof Keith’s work at the previous NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub through the ‘Fire regime guidelines for conservation of threatened species’ work package.
The Hub itself won the Eureka Prize for Applied Environmental Research in 2021 (link to summary video).
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