The Council of the Royal Society of Victoria is delighted to announce that Professor Patrick De Deckker AM has been selected to receive the RSV’s 2023 Medal for Excellence in Scientific Research. Patrick’s remarkable career spans almost three decades, making enormous contributions to fields within palaeoontology and environmental science.
‘Trees are the architects of the modern world,’ says Dr Ashleigh Hood. At the end of the Devonian period, forests emerged and spread, providing a great source of oxygen via photosynthesis. So while many consider the emergence of animals to be the principal driver of contemporary life, Ashleigh’s work suggests the atmospheric oxygen provided by terrestrial plants has been foundational to the emergence of Earth’s modern biosphere.
The Royal Society of Victoria is delighted to congratulate Dr Ashleigh Hood, the 2022 recipient of the Phillip Law Postdoctoral Award, and the first to be awarded in the new category of Earth Sciences. Her research focuses on the co-evolution of life and planetary surface conditions over the last several billion years of Earth’s history. Ashleigh attained her PhD in geology from the University of Melbourne in 2014.
Australia’s caves were formed over millions of years, and exploring them is a journey to a hidden underworld that holds many wonders. But caves and karst landforms need our protection. They house complex ecosystems, critical habitat for plants, animals, and micro-organisms which, in many cases, cannot survive elsewhere. The biggest threat is overuse from tourism – which builds positive awareness, but also damages their natural integrity.
Volume 133 No. 2 (December 2021) of the Proceedings is now available online, open access through CSIRO Publishing. The latest volume features: A Late Oligocene brachiopod fauna from the rocky shore deposit at Cosy Dell farm, Southland, New Zealand; Pioneering of numerical weather prediction in Australia by Dick Jenssen and Uwe Radok using CSIRAC; and critical analysis of the wind climate data of the Melbourne metropolitan area.
