associate PROFESSOR graham edgar

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Fulbright Tasmania Scholar

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“In the face of increasing human impacts on the marine environment through pollution, fishing, introduced pests and climate change, managers struggle to formulate efficient responses. They lack good data on threats and have incomplete knowledge on the benefits of potential management options such as marine protected areas. ”

Associate Professor Graham Edgar, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania is one of two winners of a Fulbright Tasmania Scholarship in 2010. This scholarship is sponsored by the Tasmanian government and the University of Tasmania and is awarded to an applicant to undertake research in the United States on a topic or issue of importance to the state.

Through his Fulbright, Graham will research the effectiveness of marine protected areas as a tool for biodiversity conservation at the Centre for Applied Biodiversity Science, Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia for four months.

“Because the marine environment is out of sight, managers dealing with human impacts are greatly hindered by the lack of reliable information on the nature and true scale of threats. It makes it extremely difficult to know where conservation intervention is most useful,” Graham said.

“Limited resources are often allocated to address particular threats perceived to be of great importance, but in reality, are of much less consequence than other poorly-recognised threats.”

The major aim of the project is to improve marine conservation planning through the development of models that accurately predict ecological benefits arising from one important tool available to managers, the declaration of marine protected areas (MPAs).

“The project will provide information critical for management of marine biodiversity by quantifying relationships between ecological characteristics of reef communities and marine protected zones of different size and shape. It will integrate results from Australia-wide assessments with U.S.-based field surveys,” Professor Edgar said.

The issue of management is one that is critical to the Tasmanian Government, which recently undertook a process to design a network of MPAs. Tasmania and U.S. states California and Florida all have pressing management issues related to threatened marine species. The results of the project will feed into the overall management strategies for both Australian and U.S. marine regions.

Graham has a PhD and an honours degree in marine biology from the University of Tasmania, and a BSc from the University of Sydney. In addition to his academic work he enjoys scuba diving, Spanish conversation, photography, and bushwalking.

A high resolution version of the photo above is available by clicking here.