Richard is a research scientist with extensive experience working in, and with, science and science-policy agencies in the Australian government. He has worked in environmental, agricultural and forestry agencies developing several national initiatives and frameworks involving state and territory governments, universities NGOs and land managers.

These initiatives include:

• being an instrumental player in the development of Australia's terrestrial and marine biogeographic regions;
• the National Reserve Systems (terrestrial and marine);
• establishing the framework for developing the National Vegetation Information System;
• contributing to the development of national approaches for tracking change and trends in native vegetation condition and land cover dynamics; and
• leading the development of a consistent framework for reporting impacts of spray drift on native vegetation in intensive agricultural landscapes.

Richard’s research involves assessing the transformation of ecosystems and landscapes due to the effect that changes in land use, land management regimes and practices have on ecological criteria and indicators including function, structure and composition.

His research aims to assist decision-makers in improving their ability to monitor and report on the status and to track and change trends in environmental conditions arising from deliberate and inadvertent land management regimes and practices. A focus of his current research involves evaluating regenerative landscape management regimes.

His research supports land managers and decision-makers to develop systems to track change and trends in ecological outcomes. Systems include developing response indicators and documenting soil-landscape management chronologies integral to understanding landscape transformation. Remote sensing is fundamental to upscaling ground-based measures and observations.