Researcher biography

Professor Hugh Possingham's research interests are in conservation research, operations research and ecology. More specifically his lab works on problems to secure the world's biological diversity: efficient nature reserve design, habitat reconstruction, monitoring, optimal management of populations for conservation, cost-effective conservation actions for threatened species, pest control and population harvesting, survey methods for detecting bird decline, bird conservation ecology, environmental accounting and metapopulation dynamics.

Since January 1st 2014 Professor Possingham is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. He currently directs two national research centres, including an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. He received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 1987. His research projects are in the field of decision theory in conservation biology:

  • Reserve design, biodiversity management and fire regime management
  • Population viability analysis (PVA) - including the development of ALEX
  • Pollination ecology
  • Metapopulation dynamics
  • Ecological economics
  • Optimal monitoring and environmental accounts
  • Stochastic modelling
  • Biodiversity and climate change
  • Population dynamics of marine organisms
  • Marine reserve design
  • Marine population dynamics
  • Avian community ecology
  • Edge effects and fragmentation
  • Landscape ecology
  • Behavioural and population ecology of parasitoids