ProfessorMark Hovenden

Mark Hovenden is a plant and ecosystem ecologist with a particular interest in linking how the interactions among plants and between plants and their environment lead to the function of the entire ecosystem. Both his teaching and research activities are directed towards understanding the way that plant communities and terrestrial ecosystems actually work and how and the non-living environment, particularly climate and water availability, controls ecosystem functioning. Unless we understand how ecosystems actually function, we cannot hope to manage them in a rapidly changing world, so a primary motivation for Mark's career has been to improve the way we manage the planet, starting locally and aiming globally. An extremely important component of his career is the use of manipulative field experiments supported by a broad range of approaches, from studying the responses of individual plants right up to studying how the whole ecosystem responds. Linking these measurements in the field, with a range of manipulations in relatively long-term experiments, provides a comprehensive and mechanistic assessment of ecosystem function.

Biography
Mark began his interest in botany as a child on caravanning holidays with his family in the bush across eastern Australia. He studied botany at the University of Sydney, studying fire ecology and later spending two years as a research assistant working on mangroves. He then moved to Tasmania in 1991 to work at the Australian Antarctic Division as a research scientist investigating terrestrial ecology of lichens of the Windmill Islands, near Casey Station, for which work he received his PhD from the University of Tasmania in 1996. Mark then spent a year working on low temperature effects on eucalypts at the Terrestrial Hardwood Forestry CRC in Hobart before returning to the UTas School of Plant Science as an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow working on the impacts of climate on leaf form and growth of the southern beech, Nothofagus cunninghamii. He commenced his work as a lecturer in the School of Plant Science in 1998, teaching Plant Structure and Function and Plant Ecology and has remained in his role as a balanced teaching and research academic ever since.

Mark leads a dynamic and active research group and is the Tasmanian Champion for the Commonwealth-funded Terrestrial Environment Research Network (TERN) as well as being Tasmanian node leader for the Australian Mountain Research Facility (AMRF). Mark is also the Deputy Chair of OzFlux, the peak professional organisation for flux researchers in Australia.

Career summary
Qualifications

Ph.D. Ecophysiology of Antarctic Lichens, University of Tasmania, Australia 1997
BSc (Hons) University of Sydney, Australia 1990

Memberships
Ecological Society of Australia
British Ecological Society

OzFlux

Administrative expertise
Unit and undergraduate major coordination
Research coordination