Dr Trevor Booth is leading research to protect Australian ecosystems from the impacts of climate change.

Dr Trevor Booth: developing climate change adaptation options for Australian species and ecosystems

Dr Trevor Booth is working on ways to reduce the impacts of climate change on Australia's ecosystems, as well as developing adaptation options.

• 27 January 2011 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements

Current activities

Dr Booth is Senior Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences in Canberra, Australia. He leads the Managing Species and Natural Ecosystems research theme in the Climate Adaptation National Research Flagship.

This research aims to protect Australia’s marine and terrestrial species and ecosystems from the impacts of climate change by developing adaptation options that will minimise climate-related species loss.

Central to this work is improving our knowledge of species and ecosystems responses to climate change.

The natural ecosystems theme is particularly concerned with:

• fire
• invasive species, including pests, diseases and weeds
• habitat loss
• 'mainstreaming' - the uptake of the results of research by relevant organisations and individuals.

Dr Booth has also undertaken extensive work on the National Carbon Accounting Toolbox and System.

This was developed by the Department of Climate Change (formerly the Australian Greenhouse Office) and CSIRO, and has led a series of projects encouraging its uptake internationally.

Background

Dr Trevor Booth has a long held interest in climate change, presenting his first paper on the topic in 1987.

He has led many national and international projects involving:

• climatic analysis species selection
• growth modelling and prediction
• carbon accounting.

Dr Booth’s major scientific contribution has been in developing methods to predict where and how well particular trees will grow in different environments.

Dr Booth joined CSIRO in 1976.

He worked in the Land Evaluation group at CSIRO Land Use Research, where he carried out some of the earliest applications of key methods of climatic analysis including:

• climatic interpolation
• bioclimatic envelope analysis of species requirements.

In 1987 he moved to CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products as a project leader, where he developed methods of climatic analysis and growth modelling to assist tree species selection and growth prediction.

From 1991-94 he was the program manager for Australian Tree Resources, after which time he was appointed a principal research scientist and project leader.

From 1998-2003 Dr Booth led the Farm and Environmental Forestry team.

Dr Booth has been a senior principal research scientist since 2003.

In 2008 he moved with his science team to CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and in that year was appointed as leader of the Managing Species and Natural Ecosystems research theme in the Climate Adaptation Flagship.

Dr Booth has led and contributed to major projects in Australia, Asia, Africa and South America.

Academic qualifications

Dr Booth has been awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science with Honours in Applied Biology and Ecology, from Hatfield Polytechnic in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1971
• Bachelor of Philosophy in Computation in the Life Sciences, from the University of York, UK, in 1972
• Doctor of Philosophy in Systems Analysis, from the University of Reading in UK, in 1976.

Achievements

In 1995-96 Dr Booth was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) second assessment report.

In 2004 he wrote the opening chapter for the four-volume Elsevier Encyclopaedia of Forest Sciences.

In 2007 a eucalypt rust model devised by Dr Booth was used for contingency planning by the Office of the Chief Plant Protection Officer. The disease, which spread from Latin America to Hawaii in 2005, but is not yet in Australia, threatens 1 400 eucalypt and related species.

In 2008 Dr Booth was a member of the team that won the CSIRO Partnership Excellence Award for NCAS work.

Find out about Adapting to Climate Change.