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Andrew Edwards |
Finance Chair
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Andrew graduated from the Northern Territory University in 1995 with a BSc (Earth Science) which included GIS and Remote Sensing. Employed as the GIS officer at the Northern Territory Parks & Wildlife Commission, Andrew became involved in fire mapping for the 3 major National Parks in the “Top End”: Kakadu, Litchfield and Nitmiluk covering a combined area of 24,500 km2, and of which over 40% is fire affected annually.
This then lead to a full-time position with the Bushfires Council, (the Northern Territory rural fire authority) where Andrew was eventually creating fire related products from a multitude of satellite sources for clients right across northern Australia, finally leading to the development of NAFI (the North Australia Fire Information web site) www.firenorth.org.au.
Andrew has been coordinating the data collection of the extensive spatial and temporal “Fire Monitoring Plot” program. This is a major logistic exercise as sites are randomly stratified across the 3 main “Top End” National Parks. Full floristic surveys are conducted at over 200 predominantly remote, helicopter-only access, sites, every five years staggered over 3 wet seasons.
Andrew has coordinated and largely undertaken the data collection, fire mapping and habitat mapping in the 23,000 km2 west Arnhem Plateau under the Australian Greenhouse Office sponsored West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Project. The project is a collaboration of the Indigenous representative bodies, Australia’s premier scientific agency CSIRO and the Northern Territory Government and was awarded Australia’s most prestigious science award “The Eureka Prize for Innovative Solutions to climate change”, which Andrew accepted on behalf of the team.
Current Pursuits:
Andrew is now enrolled at Charles Darwin University undertaking a PhD thesis entitled “Spectral characterisation of burn severity in north Australian tropical savanna woodlands”. Andrew has his work cut out for him as this habitat covers approximately 1.8 million square kilometres and in some parts of north Australia more than 40% of it is burnt every year. He collects reflected light from a burnt site with a hand held spectrometer hovering over the site in a helicopter, then spends hours laboriously collecting the relevant ground information to characterise the effects of the fire on the vegetation.
Andrew was co-convenor of the 14ARSPC/NARGIS08 (Australasian Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Conference [incorporating the North Australia RS & GIS 2008 Forum] www.14arspc.com held in late September 2008. Andrew is a pro-active Executive Officer of the Australasian Surveying & Spatial Sciences Institute Northern Territory Regional Committee and vice-chair of the National Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Commission.
Andrew likes to walk his dogs for relaxation. |
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Monday, May 21, 2012