Dr Dan Metcalfe, Research Scientist, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems

Dr Dan Metcalfe: managing weeds in tropical rainforests

Dr Dan Metcalfe is researching aspects of rainforest plant ecology and biology to improve the understanding of species’ distributions and management.

• 3 July 2006 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements

Current activities

Dr Dan Metcalfe works on a range of environmental and ecological topics with a botanical focus. 

He leads the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility Threatened Species, Communities and Ecosystems project which focuses on threatened species and threatening processes in the Wet Tropics bioregion, and continues to study the past, current and predicted distribution of species and communities in Australian rainforests. 

Recent foci have included the impacts of cyclones and disease on successional processes, assessing the ecosystem services provided by natural vegetation in human modified landscapes, the decline of ecosystem health associated with fragmentation, and the functional attributes that allow persistence of high biodiversity of native species, but allow weeds to take over communities and reduce species richness.

Dr Metcalfe also manages a series of long-term monitoring plots spread throughout the Wet Tropics and Cape York Peninsula. 

The plots are now up to 38 years old and have been regularly monitored to provide important information on:

• forest responses to natural disturbance events
• rates of species turnover
• the potential impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems.

Background

Dr Metcalfe’s postdoctoral studies (1994-97) were based at the CSIRO Tropical Forest Research Centre (TFRC) in Atherton, Queensland, Australia. This work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council through the University of Cambridge.

He worked with the Rainforest Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) on aspects of seed dispersal competition and their effects on seedling recruitment in lowland rain forest.

From 1998-2004 he lectured in ecology at University of Brighton in the United Kingdom (UK) and continued his interest in tropical research with field work in East and Southern Africa and South-East Asia.

In 2004 he returned to CSIRO Atherton where he now leads a research group and is Officer in Charge.

Academic qualifications

Dr Metcalfe has been awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science with Honours in Botany from the University of Bristol, UK, 1991
• Doctor of Philosophy in Plant Ecology and Ecophysiology from the University of Cambridge, UK, 1994
• Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, University of Brighton, UK, 2000.

Achievements

Dr Metcalfe is an Honorary Research Associate in the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Australia, and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at James Cook University, Australia.

He has been an invited course lecturer for the Tropical Biology Association in 2001, 2005 and 2009. 

He was awarded the University of Brighton Governors’ Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003.

Find out more about the Tropical Forest Research Centre.