Jonathan Rhodes University Of Queensland

Jonathan Rhodes University Of Queensland, Associate Professor Jonathan Rhodes is an applied ecologist working at the interface between ecology and policy to improve and better understand decision-making for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. He is based in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at The University of Queensland (UQ). He received his PhD in Ecology in 2005 and has been employed at UQ since 2007. Jonathan has a particular interest in understanding how dynamic landscape and climate change drives biodiversity and ecosystem services outcomes, and the implications of this for effective environmental decision-making under uncertainty. He is also interested in optimal monitoring and quantifying the benefits of investment in learning and research for environmental outcomes. His work has applications across a wide range of scales from local to global and in both urban and rural landscapes.

Research Interests

• Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 
  Jonathan is interested in understanding the effect of human-caused landscape change and climate change on wildlife, biodiversity and ecosystem services. He works on developing landscape scale models of how landscape structure influences biodiversity and ecosystem services in both rural, urban and coastal landscapes. By integrating these models with data this work has answered critical questions about the interaction between threat processes and ecological and social processes operating at a range of scales.
• Conservation Decision-making and Planning 
  A key focus of Jonathan’s work is the application of our understanding of drivers of change in environmental systems to decision-making a policy formulation. He uses decision science approaches to achieve this and works closely with end-users (especially government) to maximise impact and uptake. This work has made important contributions to understanding appropriate management and policy for koalas, coastal planning and linear infrastructure planning.
• Value of Information and Optimal Monitoring 
  Environmental policy and planning relies on information to make informed choices and Jonathan is interested in how we can better design investment in monitoring data and research to maximise environmental benefits. His work in this area focusses on monitoring design in complex socio-ecological systems and how research should be prioritised in these systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Arts (Hons), Kent.
• Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Queensland
• Bachelor of Science (hons), University of East Anglia