A photo of a green building taken from below.

Urban Systems & Sustainability

About

While urbanisation presents a number of opportunities including the promise of better services, stronger economies and connections, it also creates complex challenges. Our research focuses on understanding the structure, function and processes of urban social ecological systems, and the drivers and impacts of urbanisation.

Projects

Researchers undertake projects to study biodiversity and the impacts of fire and invasive animal and plant control on mammals, birds and reptiles inhabiting a range of vegetation types.

Student intake

Open for Bachelor, Honours, Masters, PhD students

People

The Centre for Water and Landscape Dynamics (WALD) sits within the Fenner School of Environment & Society, and combines satellite observations, field data and prediction models to measure, monitor and forecast natural hazards, natural resources and the environment.

Student intake

Open for Bachelor, Honours, Masters, PhD students

People

An opportunity exists for a PhD scholar to join and work on an awarded ARC linkage project.

Student intake

Open for PhD students

People

  • Dr Reza Fazeli
  • Dr Hedda Ransan-Cooper

This research looks at the identifying the costs and benefits of different trade off options so that governments in particular, and societies more broadly, can take better informed decisions around water use in China & SE Asia.

People

  • David Dumaresq

Members

Academic staff

Distinguished Professor

YangYang

Laureate Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Research Fellow

Sombol

Laureate Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Minh_1

Laureate Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Lecturer

Affiliate

Tim Baynes looks at camera and wears a blue suit

Honorary Associate Professor

Honorary Professor

Honorary Senior Lecturer

Honorary Senior Lecturer

Visiting Fellow

Student

Daniel Mugadziwa

MPhil Student

Articles

Researcher, Xuemei Bai, stands in front of the Fenner building with a grass tree beside her.

Cities and businesses have the power to play a crucial role and become the “stewards” of critical Earth systems by demonstrating how they can reduce their environmental impact on the planet, scientists say in a new report.

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We are all about wicked problems.

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To any informed reader, the idea of farming cold-ocean seabirds in the Australian desert is mind-numbingly silly. But this hypothetical idea helps us better understand how environmental governance in Australia has gone badly wrong.

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Experts say city’s expansion has put more people at risk because homes are being built on flood-prone land.

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We’ve known about the risk of floods to the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley for a long time. Yet successive state governments have failed to properly mitigate its impact. Indeed, recent urban development policies by the current NSW government will multiply the risk.

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The Mekong River is the lifeblood of countries in the Mekong region, but the past few years have seen water flows recurringly decline and processes of saltwater intrusion accelerating in the Vietnamese Mekong delta. These transboundary hydrological challenges have detrimental effects on millions of people.

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