The Centre focuses on research in tropical environments and societies across a wide range of disciplines, focusing particularly on northern Australia, Papua New Guinea, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Research in TESS falls within the following themes:

• Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation
• Ecosystem Science
• Environmental change and Archeology
• Sustainable Landscapes and Livelihoods
• Education, Training and Capacity Building.

TESS has four new ‘flagship’ projects that attack environmental issues of particularly acute concern and also cut across our thematic areas: Reducing the Global Impacts of Rapid Infrastructure Expansion;  Australia’s Northern Development and Imperilled Biodiversity; State of the Tropics: Assessing Key Trends and Challenges; Sustainable Landscapes and Livelihoods in Indonesia. This approach helps us address these key issues from a truly multidisciplinary perspective and to better integrate the wide-ranging talents of TESS’s researchers.

Website

https://research.jcu.edu.au/tess

Organisation type

• University Research Centre

Number of research staff

20-100 research staff

Address

Building A2, James Cook University, 14–88 Macgregor Road, Smithfield QLD 4870

Strengths and capabilities

• Protected area and landscape management in tropical terrestrial environments
• Assessing ecological and physiological responses to environmental change
• Understanding the drivers of changing patterns of biodiversity
• Assessing the role of humans in shaping and adapting to environmental change
• Predicting the trajectories of future environmental change
• Planning for adaptation to future environmental change
• Sustainably enhancing food, water and livelihood security across the tropics
• Reducing human impact on the natural  environment in the tropics
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing carbon sequestration potential
• Researching interactions between societies, economies and the environment

Facilities and major equipment

• The Daintree Rainforest Observatory (DRO)
• The Orpheus Island Research Station
• Fletcherview Research Station
• Cloncurry Research Station
• Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network FNQ Supersite
• The Australian Tropical Herbarium
• Advanced Analytical Centre (Cairns and Townsville)
• Dendrochronology Laboratory
• Hydrology Laboratory
• Soils, GIS and Climatology Laboratories

Lead researchers

• Professor William F. Laurance—Australian Laureate Fellow, Distinguished Professor, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science
• Professor Michael Bird—Australian Laureate Fellow, Distinguished Professor
• Professor Sean Ulm—ARC Future Fellow, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

Key science sectors

More information about the sectors this centre is involved in:

• Energy
• Environment and nature
• Food and agriculture
• Social sciences
• Tropical