Our Research
Barry W. Brook
Contact me
Email: barry.brook@utas.edu.au
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bravenewclimate
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2491-1517
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barry-Brook
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=-NjjXUYAAAAJ
About me
Barry, a conservation biologist and environmental modeller, is an ARC Australian Laureate Professor and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania. Leader of the Dynamics of Eco-evolutionary Patterns (DEEP) research group and the UTAS node of CABAH, Barry is a highly cited scientist, having published three books, over 350 refereed papers, and many popular articles. His awards include the 2006 Australian Academy of Science Fenner Medal, the 2010 Community Science Educator of the Year and 2013 Scopus Researcher of the Year.
Key interests
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global change biology
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wildlife ecology
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population dynamics
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paleoenvironments
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energy systems
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statistical-simulation models
What Drives My Research?
Saving our natural resources while still allowing for human development.
I’m researching how animal and plant populations work and what drives changes in distribution and abundance. Climate change is a huge future factor and threatens to trigger ongoing problems as we adapt by altering the way we use land and energy resources.
We have to measure and predict how our human impacts will change in the future and how to design warning systems to avoid future damage.
I believe the key is to pursue technologies that can decouple human activities from environmental damage, or even reverse historical impacts.
In the past we’ve used natural resources to grow the human population and economy – we’ve used the land for forestry, agriculture and mining, and the oceans and air to dump our waste. My goal is to find ways that modern societies can co-exist with nature and not destroy it. I believe most people want this.
Technology, if used and shared appropriately, will allow us to peak in the way we use natural resources and reduce that use over time. Our demand for resources can decline, even with growing economies and populations, for example as we use land more efficiently for agriculture or use new crop types.
We can protect ecosystems by making them less valuable to direct exploitation by the human economy. By finding other ways to generate wealth that don’t include using our natural systems, we can intensify in other areas.
To work in this field it’s important to have strong quantitative skills as well as to care about conservation and threatened species and how to manage and protect them. And we need to acknowledge the reality that ongoing human development is also a priority. Trade-offs are inevitable.
My research involves working with data: spatial information, time series data, making measurements in the field, and building computer models. Most of my research is done with a combination of field data, models and analysis of large data sets.
What really drives me is a desire to explain hard-won technical scientific evidence to a broad audience in an intelligible way so we can provoke meaningful societal change towards long-term sustainability.
To this end, I have taken an active leadership role in the communication of the science of global change to government, industry and the community – directly, via public lectures and workshops and advisory committees, and indirectly, via television, radio, print media and popular science articles. I share my thoughts on global change and technology options on my blog Brave New Climate, on YouTube, and in articles in The Conversation.
I consider myself an ‘Ecomodernist’ who is motivated to promote real-world, high-capacity and cost-effective solutions to 21st century global environmental challenges – such as nuclear power, harnessing of offworld resources and other techno-fixes.
Publications (recent)
Lévêque, L, Buettel, JC, Carver, S, Brook, BW (2021) Characterizing the spatio-temporal threats, conservation hotspots and conservation gaps for the most extinction-prone bird family (Aves: Rallidae). Royal Society Open Science 8, 210262.
Morris, S. D., C. N. Johnson, and B. W. Brook. 2020. Roughing it: terrain is crucial in identifying novel translocation sites for the vulnerable brush-tailed rock-wallaby (Petrogale pencillata). Royal Society Open Science. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201603
Damien A. Fordham, Stephen T. Jackson, Stuart C. Brown, Brian Huntley, Barry W. Brook, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Anders Svensson, Spyros Theodoridis, Janet M. Wilmshurst, Jessie C. Buettel, Elisabetta Canteri, Matthew McDowell, Ludovic Orlando, Julia Pilowsky, Carsten Rahbek, David Nogues-Bravo (2020). Using paleo-archives to safeguard biodiversity under climate change. Science . Vol. 369, Issue 6507. https://dog.org/10.1126/science.abc5654
Fordham, D. A., S. T. Jackson, S. C. Brown, B. Huntley, B. W. Brook, D. Dahl-Jensen, M. T. P. Gilbert, B. L. Otto-Bliesner, A. Svensson, S. Theodoridis, J. M. Wilmshurst, J. C. Buettel, E. Canteri, M. McDowell, L. Orlando, J. Pilowsky, C. Rahbeck, and D. Nogues-Bravo. 2020. Using paleo-archives to safeguard biodiversity under climate change. Science 369:eabc5654.
Jarić, I., R. A. Correia, B. W. Brook, J. C. Buettel, F. Courchamp, E. Di Minin, J. A. Firth, K. J. Gaston, P. Jepson, G. Kalinkat, R. Ladle, A. Soriano-Redondo, A. T. Souza, and U. Roll. 2020. iEcology: harnessing large online resources to generate ecological insights. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 35:630-639.
Fielding, M. W., Buettel, J. C. & Brook, B. W. (2020) Trophic rewilding of native extirpated predators on Bass Strait Islands could benefit woodland birds, Emu - Austral Ornithology. https://doi.org/10.1080/01584197.2020.1797509
Diengdoh, V. L., Ondei, S., Hunt, M. and Brook, B. W. (2020). A validated ensemble method for multinomial land-cover classification. Ecological Informatics
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2020.101065
Montalvo Mancheno, C. S., Ondei, S., Brook, B. W. & Buettel, J. C. (2019). Bioregionalization approaches for conservation: methods, biases, and their implications for Australian biodiversity. Biodiversity & Conservation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-019-01913-6
Flies, E. J., Mavoa, S., Zosky, G. R., Mantzioris, E., Williams, C., Eri, R., Brook, B. W. & Buettel, J. C. (2019). Urban-associated diseases: Candidate diseases, environmental risk factors, and a path forward. Environment International doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105187
Ondei, S., Brook, B.W., & Buettel, J.C. (2019). A flexible tool to prioritize areas for conservation combining landscape units, measures of biodiversity, and threats. Ecosphere. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2859
Brook, B.W., Buettel, J.C. & Jarić, I. (2019). A fast re‐sampling method for using reliability ratings of sightings with extinction‐date estimators Ecology.
https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2787
Fielding, M.W., Buettel, J.C., Nguyen, H. & Brook, B.W. (2019). Ravens exploit wildlife roadkill and agricultural landscapes but do not affect songbird assemblages. Emu-Austral Ornithology. http://www.doi.org/10.1080/01584197.2019.1629820
Fuller, C., Ondei, S., Brook, B.W., & Buettel, J.C. (2019). First, do no harm: A systematic review of deforestation spillovers from protected areas. Global Ecology and Conservation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00591
Buettel, J.C. Ringwaldt, E.M., Hovenden, M.J. & Brook, B.W. (2019). Importance of the local environment on nutrient cycling and litter decomposition in a tall Eucalypt forest. Forests 10(4), 340. https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/10/4/340
Nguyen. H.K.D., Fielding, M.W., Buettel, J.C. & Brook, B.W. (2019). Habitat suitability, live abundance and their link to road mortality of Tasmanian wildlife. Wildlife Research 46(3): 236-246. https://doi.org/10.1071/WR18128
Roy-Dufresne, E., Lurgi, M., Brown, S.C., Wells, K., Cooke, B., Mutze, G., Peacock, D., Cassey, P., Berman, D., Brook, B.W., et al. (2019).The Australian National Rabbit Database: 50 years of population monitoring of an invasive species. Ecology https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2750
Buettel, J.C.; Brook, B.W.; Cole, A.; Dickey, J.; Flies, E.J. (2018). Astro-ecology? Shifting the interdisciplinary collaboration paradigm.Ecology and Evolution 8(19): 9586-9589. DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4455.
Flies, E.J., Brook, B.W., Blomqvist, L. & Buettel, J.C. (2018). Future global food demand and model complexity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Environment International. 120: 93-103. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.07.019
Buettel, J.C., Cole, A., Dickey, J.M. & Brook, B.W. (2018). Analyzing linear spatial features in ecology. Ecology 99: 1490-1497. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.2215
Brook, B.W., Sleightholme, S.R., Campbell, C.R. & Buettel, J.C. (2018). Deficiencies in estimating the extinction date of the thylacine with mixed certainty data. Conservation Biology 32: 1195-1197. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13186
Hong, S. & Brook, B.W. (2018). At the crossroads: an uncertain future facing the electricity-generation sector in South Korea. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies 5(3): 522-532. DOI: 10.1002/app5.245
Hong, S. & Brook, B.W. (2018). Economic feasibility of energy supply by small modular nuclear reactors on small islands: case studies of Jeju, Tasmania and Tenerife. Energies 11(10): 2587. DOI: 10.3390/en11102587
Hong, S., Qvist, S. & Brook, B.W. (2018). Economic and environmental costs of replacing nuclear fission with solar and wind energy in Sweden. Energy Policy 112: 56-66. DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.10.013
Hong, S. & Brook, B.W. (2018). A nuclear- to-gas transition in South Korea: Is it environmentally friendly or economically viable? Energy Policy 112: 67-73. DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.10.012
Brook, B.W., Orcid, T. B., Wigley, T. M. L. & Hong, S. (2018). Silver Buckshot or Bullet: Is a Future “Energy Mix” Necessary? Sustainability10(2): 302. DOI: 10.3390/su10020302
Lunn, T.J., Gerwin, M., Buettel, J.C. & Brook, B.W. (2018). Impact of intense disturbance on the structure and composition of wet-eucalypt forests: a case study from the Tasmanian 2016 wildfires. PLoS ONE 13(7) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0200905
Wells, K., Fordham, D.A., Brook, B.W., Cassey, P., Cox, T., O’Hara, R.B. & Schwensow, N.I. (2018). Disentangling synergistic disease dynamics: Implications for the viral biocontrol of rabbits. Journal of Animal Ecology 87: 1418-1428. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12871
Haby, N.A., Delean, S. & Brook, B.W. (2018). Improving performance and transferability of small mammal species distribution models. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 142: 143-161. DOI: 10.1080/03721426.2018.1513770