|
Members of the public are invited to attend the following free events, organised as part of the XVIII International Botanical Congress.
Leading scientists will talk about a range of topics: from the future of wine-growing to plants in children's literature, plant conservation, and how information about Australia's plants and animals is being made available on-line.
A panel of eminent scientists, with the equally eminent science journalist Robyn Williams as moderator, will discuss and debate the role of plants and microorganisms in this time of great technological advancement and how each can be harnessed to solve tomorrow's environmental and energy problems by using life itself.
Fruits of the vine - future climates and wine
Speaker: Professor Snow Barlow - The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Date and time: Monday 25 July, 1830 - 2000
Venue: Plenary Hall, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Wine produced from the grapevine, Vitis vinifera, has been consumed for more than 10,000 years, evolving alongside cereals as essential part of early civilizations in the Middle East. Since those times many of our great civilizations have evolved and developed the sophistication of both viticulture and winemaking to provide wines of distinction and consistency. A key part of this development has been the matching of particular wine varieties, such as Shiraz and Chardonnay ,to special combinations of soils and climate allowing them to fully express their characteristic flavor and aroma profiles. This French concept of terroir encompasses the combination of climate, soils, geology and topography, that determines the characteristics of the grapes and ultimately the wines. Wine regions have effectively 'patented' and trademarked the successful combinations of terroirs and grape varieties that produce great wines such as Bordeaux and Burgundy in the form of French appellation system. Climate change challenges these established terroir relationships by changing the climate component thereby altering ripening temperatures and the resulting wines. Rising temperatures in wine regions around the world are resulting in earlier ripening and earlier vintages. In some areas of Australia and Europe vintages have moved forward by as much as a day per year over the past 30-40 years. While some of these vintage temperatures are within the range of season to season variation many are not and certainly will not be in the future. How has climate change altered the climate in well known terroirs and how will the global wine industry respond to these challenges to established terroirs particularly if we ,as consumers, wish to continue to savior the 'grassiness' of Malborough Sauvignon Blanc or the 'white pepper' of cool climate Shiraz ? What sort of wines can we look forward to in the future ?
Professor Barlow is Foundation Professor of Horticulture and Viticulture at the University of Melbourne He is a plant physiologist with research interests in, viticulture and impacts of climate change on agriculture, water management and global food security. His research group studies the adaptation of the horticultural and viticultural industries to climate change to drier/hotter climates.
He chairs the Expert Panel of the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 'climate change R & D program and convenes the National Primary Industries Research Adaptation Network.
Together with his partner Winsome McCaughey, he operates a vineyard in the Strathbogie Ranges in North Eastern Victoria and markets wine under the Baddaginnie Run label.
The World of Plants
Speaker: Professor Peter H. Raven - Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, USA
Date and time: Tuesday 26 July 2011, 1830 - 2000
Venue: Plenary Hall, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
We depend for all fundamental aspects of our lives on plants. The dominant angiosperms evolved at least 120 million years ago, diversified in the face of climate evolution and change, coevolved with insects and other herbivores, and adapted to diverse habitats. Angiosperms provide our food, most of our medicines, building materials, cloth, chemical feedstocks, and many other products and possibilities for the future. In addition they provide an enormous array of ecosystem services and add meaning and beauty to our lives. At least 400,000 species of angiosperms exist, the great majority of them poorly known, with perhaps 20% of the species and a much higher proportion of the genetic diversity threatened with extinction over the next decade or two and probably more than half by the end of the century. In the face of human pressures on the environment, already estimated to be using a rapidly growing150% of the world's sustainable productivity on an ongoing basis, we must find effective ways of conserving the plants on which we depend and which offer so much promise for the future. Learning about them and disseminating the information efficiently, conserving natural areas in the face of growing adverse changes, building seed banks, and educating people to know and love what they are losing - these are elements of the strategy now so badly needed to insure a future that begins to match the present. - Peter H. Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Brave New World: can we solve tomorrow's environmental and energy problems by using life itself?
Moderator: Robyn Williams, ABC Science Show
Date and time: Wednesday 27 July 2011, 1230-1330
Venue: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Studying life in all its forms is exciting at this time of great technological change. Computers and modern scientific techniques have provided us with an understanding of life processes at the molecular level in a way never before possible.
Yet we know little about the unicellular organisms that make up most of the Tree of Life. Much of our scientific research efforts and investments go into the study and conservation of relatively few multicellular creatures and ecosystems. Research on the rest of life focuses mostly on controlling harmful microorganisms rather than looking for useful ones.
Is the time right to prioritise research into useful microbes, harnessing them to convert significant amounts of CO2 into biomass and biofuels and to capture and store significant amounts of carbon to slow climate change? Plants feed us and nature sustains us but could microorganisms give us the ‘biggest bang for our buck’?
These questions will be discussed and debated by a distinguished panel, moderated by Robyn Williams, eminent Australian Broadcasting Commission science journalist http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/rwilliam.htm
Speaking for the plants:
- Prof. David Mabberley, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK; soon to be Executive Director of Sydney's Botanic Gardens Trust -
http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/welcome_to_bgt/feature_stories/
New_Executive_Director
- Dr Kevin Thiele, Curator Western Australia Herbarium - http://science.dec.wa.gov.au/people/?sid=246
Speaking for the microbes:
The format is conversational with Robyn setting the scene and then each speaker presenting a point of view for 5-10 minutes. Then Robyn will ask/take questions - from the floor or via live links.
(Supported by Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Sydney, Australia and coordinated by Janelle Hatherly, Manager Public Programs. Any enquires to Janelle.hatherly@rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au)
Sister Water Lily meets the Big Bad Banksia Man
Speaker: Dr Peter Bernhardt - Saint Louis University, St Louis, USA
Date and time: Thursday 28 July 2011, 1830 - 2000
Venue: Plenary Hall, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Can a whimsical and largely discarded branch of illustration be used to reinvigorate botanical education? Peter and his co-author Retha Meier review the works of C.M. Barker (England), W. Crane (England), May Gibbs (Australia), J.J. Grandville (France) and M.T. Ross (America). All produced detailed illustrations featuring anthropomorphic flowers, stems and edible plants. The tragic J.I.I. Gerad (a.k.a. Grandville, 1803-1847) began this trend in floral fantasy to amuse a mature audience of sophisticated Parisians but his techniques were assimilated by later author/artists of children's books. Within little more than a century (1847-1952) their combined oeuvre reminded or taught viewers simple, amusing and often visually accurate lessons in plant morphology/identification, phenology, economic botany, plant-animal mutualisms and phytogeography. These drawings, often reinforced botanical information by employing visual puns and satirizing the old, European, 'language of flowers'. We could certainly use a little of this style today with the fundamentals of plant biology taught so infrequently in many countries. In particular, author/illustrator, May Gibbs (1879-1969) developed the art of 'people plants' to introduce generations of Australian children to plant diversity common to southeastern and southwestern Australia.
Peter Bernhardt is a Professor of Biology at and a Research Associate of the Missouri Botanical Garden (St Louis) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. Research in the Bernhardt/Meier laboratory concentrates on flower evolution and the pollination systems of rare and threatened plants in North America, Australia and China. Peter is the author/co-author of 75 reviewed journal articles and four popular books on plant life including 'Wily Violets and Underground Orchids' (1989) and 'Gods and Goddesses in the Garden' (2008). He has a keen interest in how plants have been incorporated as characters in children's literature.
The Atlas of Living Australia: infrastructure for biodiversity research
Speaker: Dr Donald Hobern - Atlas of Living Australia, CSIRO Entomology, Canberra, Australia
Date and time: Friday 29 July 2011, 1830 - 2000
Venue: Plenary Hall, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
The Atlas of Living Australia is a national initiative focused on making Australia's biodiversity information more accessible and useable online. In short, 'an online encyclopedia of all living things in Australia'. The Atlas website already holds more than 23 million distribution records for Australia's fauna and flora, integrated with over 300 environmental layers for mapping and analysis. In addition the site brings together photos, maps, identification tools, reference lists of species names and classifications, databases on biological collections and literature. All of these resources are freely available at http://www.ala.org.au/. Ultimately, the Atlas aims to enable anyone to find, analyse and map information on all aspects of Australian biodiversity online. Researchers, managers and others can use the Atlas in their efforts to protect, manage and monitor Australia's biodiversity and biosecurity, from conserving species to tracking invasive pests. As a research tool, the Atlas can help to create species distribution models, predict areas that could be suitable for a species, or work out how a species will be affected by a change in climate, among other things. The Atlas enables researchers to provide policy and decision makers with targeted and useful information, presented in accessible ways. Members of the public can contribute sightings and photos of species and help to build a more complete picture of Australia's biodiversity. Funded by the Australian Government, the Atlas is a collaboration between CSIRO, Australia's national science research agency, and more than 60 biological collections from Museums and Herbaria, Federal and State Departments, universities and microbial collections.
Donald Hobern's career spans over twenty years in software development and biodiversity informatics. In 2007, Mr Hobern was appointed as the inaugural Director of the Atlas of Living Australia. He has overseen the delivery of the Atlas' architecture and core tools within the context of multi-partner collaborations.
Prior to this, he was the Deputy Director for Informatics at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). His responsibilities at GBIF included adoption of data standards for biodiversity data and the establishment of a global architecture for information exchange.
Mr Hobern served as Chair of the Biodiversity Information Standards (Taxonomic Database Working Group - TDWG), the international organisation responsible for development of standards for exchange of biodiversity data from 2008 to 2010. He is also an active lepidopterist.
|
