elizabeth madin
2007 Fulbright Alumni Initiative Grant recipient
Elizabeth Madin is one of two inaugural recipients of the 2007 Fulbright Alumni Initiative Grant. Elizabeth, currently with the Marine Science Institute and Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), is headed to Australia to work with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) on ocean ecosystems.
Elizabeth was a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar to Australia in 1999 and will return to Queensland to work with AIMS on a project to understand how a variety of human impacts on ocean ecosystems alter the way marine food webs work.
“A number of researchers at UCSB and AIMS, and other institutions globally, have been examining whether removing top predators, for example sharks and other large predators, from ocean ecosystems has cascading effects on other parts of the system. Such knock-on effects are known in marine ecology as ‘trophic cascades’”.
“The AIMS Long-Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) database provides a highly unique tool to explore the community-wide consequences of predator loss on coral reefs over unusually large spatial and temporal scales. Our project will utilise this comprehensive, high-quality reef monitoring dataset to examine the question: Is there evidence, over space and/or time, of community-level trophic cascades on the Great Barrier Reef?” Elizabeth said.
“The coral reef system of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) provides an ideal ‘natural experiment’ by which to examine the community-wide consequences of predator loss over such large spatial and temporal scales. For example, in the GBR, patterns of fishing intensity for a number of ecologically-important predatory fish species vary spatially, with greater intensity concentrated in the southern-central regions of the GBR and with substantially less effort in the northern regions.”
This project is a natural outgrowth of Elizabeth’s original Fulbright research at James Cook University, which focused on the social, or human-based, dimension of marine conservation.
Elizabeth believes the project on her Fulbright Alumni Initiative Grant will directly benefit AIMS and UCSB in two primary ways: “Scientifically, this work will draw together parallel lines of research currently being pursued by individuals at these institutions in different biogeographic regions. Secondly, and equally importantly, this research will provide a formal institutional linkage between these two world-class marine science institutes.”
The aim of the Alumni Initiative Grant is to help build the individual Fulbright experience into long-term institutional collaboration and linkages. This grant provides support a Fulbright Alumnus and their original home and host institutions to develop innovative projects that will foster institutional linkages and sustainable, mutually beneficial relationships.