Peter Vesk

I am a lecturer in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne. More information about me is here.

If you are a student and want to find out about opportunities for further study, look at our research or here for general info.

People who have studied or worked Peter are listed here.

Rhiannon Apted

Rhiannon completed honours in 2005 at La Trobe University where she studied livestock grazing management in western volcanic plains grasslands and differential herbivory by vertebrate (sheep) and invertebrate (slug) on bioassay plantings.

See here for more on the project that Rhiannon was involved in. Her supervisors were John Morgan (La Trobe University) and Josh Dorrough (Arthur Rylah Institute, Victorian Department of Sustainability & Environment).

Rhiannon is working as a research assistant on the Bush Returns project with Goulburn-Broken Catchment Management Authority.

Rhiannon has a hot red ute with a statesman front end. It's in the shed. rapted<at>unimelb.edu.au

Alex recently completed honours with Peter in 2006 at Melbourne. She worked on eucalypt seedling growth and survival in gaps in pasture. I think she made it through because she ran every lunchtime. That and sleeping till 4pm at every opportunity.

Alex is now working on two projects, seed trapping to estimate the seed rain of woodland eucalypt trees in paddocks; the invertebrates in revegetation project with Saul Cunningham from CSIRO Entomology.

contact Alex if you want a recent perspective on Peter as a supervisor. aethorp<at>yahoo.com.au

Yung En Chee

Yung is working as a Post Doc on the Riverine Restoration Project
Yung has most recently been working on a monitoring scheme for environmental flows in Victorian Rivers for the e-water CRC and DSE.
Yung completed her PhD with Mark Burgman in the Environmental Sciences Lab downstairs from us. In that project she developed models for environmental flows and ecological risk assessment.

contact Yung at yechee<at>unimelb.edu.au

Terry Walshe

Terry is a chatty fella who enjoys Darjeeling tea and patting dogs. His work involves risk analysis and management in environmental contexts. Also a past graduate of the Burgman lab and currently teaching in the school of Botany, Terry is working with Peter and Parks Victoria on the Box-Ironbark thinning trial modelling project.

Terry rarely looks as grumpy as this. He just entered into a headbutt competition with some rocks on the sea floor--the rocks won.

Terry answers email on: twalshe<at>unimelb.edu.au

Cassia Read

Cassia is doing a PhD co-supervised by Jane Elith, Mark Burgman, John Morgan (La Trobe) and Peter. Her project is "The role of biological soil crusts in vegetation dynamics of the Murray Mallee bioregion, Victoria."

Brief project description
The biological soil crust is the diverse community of moss, lichen, algae, fungi and cyanobacteria, existing at the soil surface in ecosystems of low canopy cover. Although the biological crust has been linked to ecological functions such as nutrient cycling, soil stability and seedling establishment the functional importance of the biological crust in landscape health is still poorly understood, particularly its role in vegetation dynamics of hot deserts such as in Australia. There have been very few surveys documenting patterns in the composition and distribution of soil crusts in Victoria. Further, the role of soil crusts in establishment and survival of vascular plants in Australia is largely unstudied, despite significant implications for the management of remnant vegetation. This project will explore through field work and statistical modelling, patterns in the distribution and composition of biological soil crust in the Murray Mallee bioregion of Victoria. This project will go on to investigate the role of the crust in the germination and establishment of vascular plants through field and glass-house trials. Finally this project will synthesise results from this study and the scientific literature to develop a model of the role of biological crusts in vegetation dynamics of the Murray Mallee. This information will be a valuable resource for the management, conservation and restoration of remnant vegetation in semi-arid ecosystems.

contact Cassia at cread3<at>pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Chrissy Czembor

Chrissy is a Canuck, and her accent gives me no end of enjoyment. Finally, she has provided some material:

I'm doing a Masters by Research under the supervision of Pete Vesk, with co-supervision from Brendan Wintle.

My project aims to investigate stand structure and habitat in Box-Ironbark Forests over time using models constructed with the knowledge of experts in the field. These models will illustrate how management and natural disturbances may affect the rate and likelihood of stands changing from their current degraded state to stands that more resemble pre-European forests and provide habitat for multiple fauna species. Key foci of this project include investigating the process of eliciting expert opinion, undertaking cost analyses, and the acknowledgement of uncertainty in model estimates.

Chrissy's email: c.czembor<at>pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Anthony Davidson

Anthony is doing honours in 2007 on estimating canopy seed stores of woodland eucalypts in northern Victoria. Anthony is a mad keen cyclist and passionate about conservation and effecting real change in environmental management.

Rachael Nolan completed her Honours research project with Peter and Ralph Mac Nally at Monash in 2004. Rachael researched the condition of the grassy ground layer of Gilgai Plains Grassy Woodlands in the Goulburn-Broken catchment. Rachael worked with Ralph and Peter for 18 months on the Massive project and is now travelling in South America.