One week in

I've arrived

Well I made it to my new "home" in the suburbs of Sydney, and I've been here for a week. It certainly won't feel like home until Carrie arrives in a bit more than a month. I traveled for more than 24-hours on three flights, including a 15-hour leg from Dallas to Brisbane. I planned to write a long, complaint-filled post about the horrors of such a long flight; I even thought about plagiarizing some of Lewis Black's classic stand-up lines. But honestly, the flight wasn't really that bad.

Hills outside of Sydney, with some clouds in the valleys.

Flying coach on Qantas was surprisingly civilized and comfortable. I ate dinner, watched a movie, ate a bedtime snack, slept a full eight hours, ate breakfast, watched some tv, read, watched another movie, and then we arrived in Brisbane. It was basically like spending a lazy weekend at home, just confined to a single comfy chair.





My job at the University of Western Sydney

I spent the last week settling into my apartment and learning about the institution that I've joined, so I'd like to show you around the Uni (as the Aussies say). I'm going to focus on the scientific infrastructure that's available to me, as this was one of the major factors that drew me to this job, but I'll also tell you a bit about the town I'm in. And best yet, I have lots of pictures to share.

Richmond

UWS is a big school with 35,000 students, but they are spread across six campuses. The Richmond campus was traditionally the agricultural center of the Uni, so there are just 3,000 students on a campus surrounded by livestock pasture, particularly cows, sheep, goats, and deer (yes really). Richmond itself is considered a suburb of Sydney and it is connected to the city by public transit, but it's a 90 minute train ride to downtown. So this is a relatively sleepy little town with a sleepy little Ag school.

I have many more like this, but I figured that two "horse poo pictures" were enough to demonstrate my point. You can't buy your poo in Richmond- you've got to go 2 km outside of town.

I would describe the feel of the Uni as "pastoral tropics". It's peacefully pleasant, with palm trees everywhere, enough colorful birds to make you feel like you're on vacation, with red tile buildings with exterior floor plans. It's remarkable how many offices have direct exterior doors, as if the architects thought "The weather is always so bloody brilliant, why put the hallway inside? Everyone's door goes outside!"

Palm trees in front of a rugby pitch. I've learned to associate these things with Australia.

Professor's offices go right outside

 

 

Research infrastructure

I didn't come here to sell manure- I came here to do ecological research.  Two years ago UWS got a government grant worth 45 million AUD for a suite of environmental programs. Some of that money went to green building and solar power research, but a very large chunk went towards establishing environmental research into the effects of global climate change on Australian ecosystems. Now, UWS has some of the best research infrastructure in my field, worldwide.

Whole Tree Chambers

 

The below pictures show twelve whole-tree chambers, each of which encloses a single tree, fully controls the temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration, and simultaneously measures rates of photosynthesis and respiration automagically. I'm excited to use these for studies of whole tree physiology that would not otherwise be possible. In particular, we are studying how Australian trees can be expected to respond to the climate conditions expected in the next few decades (hotter, drier, with higher carbon dioxide concentrations).

These chambers are large and impressive in person. Even more impressive- the Eucalypt trees studied here grow fast enough to fill these 8-meter-tall chambers in a single year.

 

Elevated CO2 site

Plots of a natural Eucalypt woodland ecosystem are exposed to elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide in open-air conditions, with no barriers to pathogens, insect pests, or environmental artifacts associated with chambers. Enormous cranes are used to carry researchers around the canopy of these forests to collect samples or measure photosynthesis.

 

The white circular rings are a gas delivery system. If the wind is blowing from the North, valves open and deliver CO2 from the North; the wind naturally carries the CO2 into the experimental plot. If the wind switches to the South, the system responds, opens other valves, and delivers the CO2 from the South. Thus, the system dynamically responds to natural wind conditions to maintain the concentration of carbon dioxide in the experimental plot at elevated levels- mimicking what we expect to happen in a few decades.

Other stuff

Drought is a big deal in Australia, so we have large rain-out shelters to experimentally impose droughts. These shelters remain open most of the time to minimize environmental artifacts, but the panels close when the system senses rain.

We've also got state of the art lab facilities, including clean rooms, high-zoot microscopes, super fast DNA sequencers, and lots of high tech toys for me to play with. To give you an idea of the scale of the resources here, there is a machine that scientists in my field commonly use to measure photosynthesis which costs about $50,000. We had two of these in the lab where I did my PhD research, which was pretty cool. Well, last year this environmental institute bought ten. Ten. That's craziness.

This is a pretty cool place to work. If you want more information, here's the homepage and a news story.