Geoff Cary
Content navigation
About
Professor Geoff Cary specialises in bushfire (wildland fire) science in the Fenner School of Environment & Society at the Australian National University (ANU). He was awarded a Bachelor of Applied Science (Environmental Biology) (Honours) from the University of Technology, Sydney, and a PhD in the topic of landscape fire modelling from ANU.
Geoff is Associate Director (Research) (2020 - ) in the Fenner School and previously served as Associate Director (Higher Degree Research). He is on the Editorial Advisory Committee, and was Associate Editor (2002-2023), for the International Journal of Wildland Fire. He was Discipline Panel Member for Excellence in Research for Australia 2015 & 2018 ANU submissions. Geoff sits on the CoS Research Committee and Fenner School Executive Committee, and has served on the CoS Reconciliation Action Plan Committee, FSES Local Area Consultative Committee, ANU WHS Fieldwork Advisory Group, ANU Statistical Consulting Unit Advisory Committee, NSW Parks & Wildlife Advisory Council, and was a mentor in the ANU NECTAR early career Mentoring Program.
Geoff gave a keynote address, on fuel management & house loss, at the Wildland Fire Canada Conference (Kananaskis, 2012). He was an invited speaker at the 10th World Wilderness Congress (Salamanca, Spain, 2013), the International Association of Landscape Ecology World Congress (Portland, USA, 2015), Banff International Research Station fire management workshop (Canada, 2017), an International Workshop of Fire Ecology (China, 2019), and the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine workshop on greenhouse gas emissions from wildland fires (2023).
Geoff also co-led an international group of landscape-scale wildland fire simulation modellers from 2001 to 2018. Media engagement includes Voice of America and ABC Radio National ‘The World Today’.
Affiliations
Research interests
Geoff’s research interests include: landscape-scale simulation of fire management & climate change effects on fire regimes; fire ecology from genes to communities; house loss in wildland fire; and laboratory experimentation of fire behaviour.
- Environmental Management
- Conservation And Biodiversity
- Forestry Fire Management
- Terrestrial Ecology
- Landscape Ecology
- Environmental Science And Management.
Researcher's projects
ARC Discovery Project
‘Can animal dispersal inform fire management for species conservation?’ with Sam Banks, Geoff Cary, Hugh Davies, Graeme Gillespie, and others
‘Managing Australian landscapes to reduce house loss during fire’ with Phil Gibbons, Geoff Cary, Steve Dovers, Max Moritz
Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre Project
'Mapping Bushfire Hazards and Impacts' with Marta Yebra, Albert van Dijk, Geoff Cary
ARC Linkage Project
‘Fauna, Fuel and effects of native animals on fuel dynamics and bushfire risks' with David Lindenmayer, Geoff Cary, Paul Kardol, David Wardle, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow Claire Foster
ACIAR Project
‘Improving community fire management and peatland restoration in Indonesia' with ANU Investigators Luca Tacconi, Geoff Cary, Peter Kanowski, John McCarthy, Lisa Robins, Lorrae Van Kerkhoff, and others
Other recent projects
Fenner School-National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health project
‘Climate Change and Rural Communities: Integrated Study of Physical and Social Impacts, Health Risks and Adaptive Options’
Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre project
'Future Scenarios & Economics' with Steve Dovers, Malcolm Gill & Helena Clayton
US-NZ-Aus collaborative project funded by NSF
'Wildfire-PIRE: Feedbacks and consequences of altered fire regimes in the face of climate and land-use change in Tasmania, New Zealand, and the western U.S.'
Projects
- Fire management and innovation, Principal investigator
Teaching information
Geoff teaches bushfire dynamics and management in ANU courses, including ‘Fire in the Environment’ (Convenor), with contributions to: ‘Island Sustainable Development’; 'Environment & Society'; 'Climate Change Vulnerability & Adaptation'; 'Biodiversity Conservation'; and 'Environmental Policy'.
He managed the PhD and MPhil program in the Fenner School as Associate Director for Higher Degree Research in 2010 and 2011.
Available student projects
Projects are developed in consultation with potential students.
Current student projects
Heather Burns (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Examining the effectiveness of supplementary habitats for small mammals and reptiles after fire (Associate Supervisor)
Rachel Taylor (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Australian Fire Season Severity Forecasting in Present and Future Climates (Associate Supervisor)
Sami Ullah Shah (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Development of a composite method to predict wildfire hazard using remote sensing data and GIS (Associate Supervisor)
Vicki Miller (School of Culture, History and Language, ANU)
PhD: Long term fire and vegetation change in south-western Victoria: Disentangling anthropogenic factors from natural drivers (Associate Supervisor)
Alex Carey (Charles Darwin University)
PhD: Using landscape genetics and other tools to understand how spatial patterns of fire affect the dispersal and persistence of mammals on the Tiwi islands (external Associate Supervisor)
Past student projects
Past Graduate Research Supervision
Dr. Matt Gale (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Applications of LiDAR for bushfire fuel assessment in Australian forests (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Dr. Matt Chard (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Flora, fauna & fire: Feedbacks of macropod herbivory on fire regimes (Associate Supervisor)
Dr. Li Zhao (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Incorporating soil moisture dynamics for dead fine fuel moisture estimates (Associate Supervisor)
Dr Daniel May (School of History, ANU)
PhD: Taking Fire: The Historical and Contemporary Politics of Indigenous Burning in Australia and the Western United States (Associate Supervisor)
Dr Michael Doherty (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Fire Severity and Plant Community Dynamics in the Australian Alps, Southeastern New South Wales (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Dr Kelly Dixon (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Achieving ecological integrity in protected areas: aligning fire management with conservation objectives (Associate Supervisor)
Dr David Taylor (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Prescribed burning to increase the richness of long-unburned and fragmented mallee communitiess (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Dr Robyn Shaw (Research School of Biology, ANU)
PhD: The genetic consequences of demography and disturbance in small mammal populations (Associate Supervisor)
Dr Zoe Reynolds (Research School of Biology, ANU)
PhD: Disturbed birds: The function of fire in shaping patterns of avian diversity in south-eastern Australia (Associate Supervisor)
Dr Ian Davies (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Scale and abstraction: The sensitivity of fire-regime simulation to nuisance parameters (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Dr Luke Nguyen-Hoan (Computer Science, ANU)
PhD: Visualising ecological scenarios and simulations (Supervisor)
Dr Phil Zylstra (ADFA, UNSW)
PhD: Forest flammability - modeling and managing a complex system (co-supervisor)
Dr Adam Leavesley (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: The response of birds to the fire regimes of mulga woodlands in central Australia (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Dr Lyndsey Vivian (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Variation in fire response traits of plants in mountainous plant communities of south-eastern Australia (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Dr Karen King (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Simulating the effects of anthropgenic burning on patterns of biodiversity (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Dr Auro Almeida (Fenner School, ANU)
PhD: Application of a process-based model for predicting and explaining growth in Eucalyptus plantations (Panel Chair)
Nic Gellie (Fenner School, ANU)
MPhil: Landscape Susceptibility to Large Fires (Primary Supervisor and Panel Chair)
Mourad Jaffar-Bandjee (Université Paris Sud, France)
Master of Environment: Effect of disturbance on genetic diversity (Supervisor)
_________________________________________________________________
Past Honours Research Supervision
Riley Guyatt (Fenner School, ANU; CSIRO), Honours: Investigating the behaviour of backing fire in dry eucalypt litter under controlled conditions; 2023 Tillyard Prize recipient (ANU Supervisor)
Sophia Cain (Fenner School, ANU), Honours: Impacts of macropod herbivory on plant traits - consequences for flammability (Co-supervisor)
Margot Schneider (Fenner School, ANU), Honours: Exploring the effects of past fire regimes on leaf chemistry: Can fire make a system more flammable? (Co-supervisor)
Matt Gale (Fenner School, ANU), Vulnerability of post-fire Eucalyptus delegatensis regeneration across stand boundaries
Lauren De Waal (Research School of Engineering, ANU), Grassland curing and moisture content monitoring with automated sensing systems
Nick Wilson (Fenner School, ANU), Effects of competition on vegetation structure and fuel characteristics
James Hall (Fenner School, ANU), Combustion and flight characteristics of smooth-bark firebrands
Josh Mulvaney (Fenner School, ANU), Fire behaviour variability arising from standard fuel beds in a horizontal wind tunnel
Amy Davidson (Fenner School, ANU), Statistical modeling of fire frequency in the Sydney region
Rob de Ligt (Fenner School, ANU), Modelling fire probability in the Sydney region
Carola K. de Bednarik (ANU), Factors affecting fire severity in the 2003 bushfires
Lyndsey Vivian (ANU), Recruitment at eucalypt stand boundaries after bushfires
Christine Kelly (ANU), Effects of fire frequency on subalpine understory
Michael Nguyen (ANU), Bushfire effects on water yield
Rochelle Richards (ANU), Snow gum sensitivity to bushfire scar formation
Brendan Pippen (ANU), Modelling bushfire fuel moisture content
Ben Stein (ANU), Species distribution modelling
Alison Pritchard (ANU), Bushfire fuel modelling
_________________________________________________________________
Past Supervision of Independent Research and Advanced Studies Projects
Josie Ginty (PhB Scholar), The environmental impacts of global change: a case study in Eucalyptus pauciflora (Supervisor)
Josh Mulvaney (Fenner School), Using fuel moisture models to develop an experimental burning program (Supervisor)
Rachael Tarlinton (Fenner school), Use of hyperspectral remote sensing data for assessing fuel moisture content (Supervisor)
Location
Forestry Building (48)