Environmental Engineering Reference
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'Australia has a disproportionately large share of the arid areas of the world . . . [with
a] ratio of arid to non-arid land . . . [of] approximately three to one . . .' (1956: 2),
answering the questions posed by the UNESCO Advisory Council proved
challenging. Australia was proud of its internationally significant science, but its
desert areas had been neglected. Science was difficult in a region that lacked roads
and basic infrastructure. The UNESCO questions forced a different approach.
From 1960 onwards, an increasing number of international arid zone experts visited
the Australian deserts, often on Fulbright fellowships (Heathcote, 1987: 12). Their
efforts were noted in the Arid Zone Newsletter ( AZN ) that Christian edited from
1956, which documented initiatives by CSIRO, state government agencies and
universities, including international ones. AZN continued until 1987, and it was
written to be read by people living in arid zone communities as well as policy-
makers. Land systems surveys dominated the science until the 1960s, but after that
there was an increasing interest in the physiology of desert-dwelling animals,
particularly how they responded to stress under desert conditions. In 1961, two
professors of zoology, Harry Waring from the University of Western Australia, and
Jock Marshall, the Foundation Professor of Zoology at Monash University in
Melbourne, led this research. Many of their graduates led the next generations of
arid zone scientists in Australia and beyond. Research in Australian rangelands and
deserts also began to contribute to degrees in overseas universities from the 1970s,
including Utah, Tucson, Israel, Jodhpur and Guelph, each of which developed a
particular specialty in arid zone science ( Arid Zone Newsletters , 1973-1978; Robin,
2007: 114-122).
Deserts in Australia and Israel compared: Imanuel Noy-Meir
In 1973, in the same issue of the same journal as Holling's resilience paper,
Argentinian-born Israeli ecologist, Imanuel Noy-Meir (1941-2009) published a
seminal paper theorising a whole ecosystem approach to deserts (Noy-Meir, 1973).
The Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics encouraged longer syntheses of major
concepts and research programs. Resilience was the subject of its first paper that
year, and desert ecosystems (part 1) was the second. Noy-Meir's paper defined pulse
and reserve systems, a concept that theorised the effects of boom-and-bust climatic
conditions on animals and plants in the highly variable Australian arid zone (Robin
et al ., 2009). Like Holling's paper from 1973, Noy-Meir's is still cited today (see,
for example, Morton et al ., 2011). The framework of the global IBP was evident
in Noy-Meir's questions, just as it had been in Holling's. Noy-Meir's task was to
study deserts for IBP, and the Australian desert was his key case. The pulse of desert
life there depends on rain, but there can be years between events. When the rain
finally comes, the reserve comes into play. Noy-Meir credited Australian rangeland
scientist Mark Westoby with coining the term 'pulse and reserve system' (Noy-
Meir, 1973: 30), and the uncertainty of the Australian system informed new
theoretical approaches in these years and since (Noy-Meir, 1974, 1975; Morton
et al ., 2011).
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