Job title: Senior Lecturer
Phone: 64 9 373 7599 ext 84599
Office: Rm 436, Human Sciences Building
Postal: School of Environment,
The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Email: george.perry@...

BSc (Hons) and MSc (Canty), PhD (Melbourne), PGCAP (London)

I completed undergraduate and Masters studies in the Departments of Geography and Plant and Microbial Sciences at the University of Canterbury, before doing a PhD at the University of Melbourne. I worked in the Dept. of Geography at King's College London for four years before returning to New Zealand and the School of Environment. My research interests lie broadly in the field of plant community and landscape ecology, with a methodological interest in spatial analysis and modelling in this context, and my undergraduate and graduate teaching is conducted in these areas. My research interests lie broadly in the field of plant community and landscape ecology, with a methodological interest in spatial analysis and modelling in this context.

My recent research has combined field-, lab- and simulation model-based approaches in broad areas of enquiry. First, I have focused on the reciprocal effects of spatial pattern on ecological process especially in the context of understanding mechanisms of coexistence. This work has been conducted in species-rich shrublands in Western Australia and temperate forests in New Zealand. I have been PI on a Marsden-funded project considering coexistence in NZ's Nothofagus (Beech) forests using a combination of field-work (stand mapping and measurement and spatial dendrecology) and individual-based modelling. Second, I am interested in the dynamics of fire-prone landscapes and ecosystems, with a focus on prehistoric and contemporary landscapes in the southwest Pacific (New Zealand and New Caledonia) and the effects of modern land-use change on wildfire risk (Spain). In this context, I am involved in research projects with colleagues from New Zealand (Landcare Research), Australia and the USA looking at the ecological role and impacts of fire in New Zealand's prehistoric and contemporary ecosystems (Wildfire-PIRE). I am also interested in the development and application of quantitative methods in ecology - in particular, the development and application of new methods for spatial point pattern analysis and for spatial simulation. I have a joint appointment between the School of Environment and the School of Biological Sciences. During the first six months of 2012 I will be based at Harvard Forest as a Charles Bullard Fellow.

Journal articles (since 2007)

Wooster, M.J., Perry, G.L.W & Zoumas, A. 2012. Fire, drought and El Niño relationships on Borneo (south-east Asia) during the pre-MODIS era (1980-2000). Biogeosciences 9: 317-340.

Millet, L.J., Collens, M.B., Perry, G.L.W. & Bashir, R. 2011. Pattern analysis and spatial distribution of neurons in culture. Integrative Biology 3: 1167-1178.

Millington, J.D.A. & Perry, G.L.W. 2011. Multi-model inference in biogeography. Geography Compass 5: 448-463

Esther, A., Groeneveld, J., Enright, N.J., Miller, B.P., Lamont, B.B., Perry, G.L.W., Tietjen, B. & Jeltsch, F. 2011. Low-dimensional trade-offs fail to explain richness and structure in species-rich plant communities. Theoretical Ecology: 4: 495-511.

Perry, G.L.W., Ogden, J., Enright, N.J. & Davy, L.V. 2010. Vegetation patterns and trajectories in disturbed landscapes, Great Barrier Island, northern New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Ecology 34: 311-323.

Perry, G.L.W., Groeneveld, J. & Miller, B.P. 2010. Development, application and place of neutral theory in ecology and biogeography. Geography Compass. 4: 904-918.

Rigg, L.S., Enright, N.J., Jaffré, T. & Perry, G.L.W. 2010. Contrasting population dynamics of the endemic New Caledonian conifer Araucaria laubenfelsii in maquis and rain forest. Biotropica 42: 479-487.

Miller, B.P., Perry, G.L.W., Enright, N.J. & Lamont, B.B. 2010. Contrasting spatial pattern and pattern-forming processes in natural vs. restored shrublands. Journal of Applied Ecology 47: 701-709.

Esther, A. Groeneveld, J., Enright, N.J., Miller, B.P. Lamont, B.B., Perry, G.L.W., Blank, B. & Jeltsch, F. 2010. Sensitivity of plant functional types to climate change: classification tree analysis of a simulation model. Journal of Vegetation Science 21: 447-461.

Perry, G.L.W., Enright, N.J., Miller, B.P., Lamont, B.B. and Etienne, R.S. 2009. Dispersal, edaphic fidelity, and speciation in species-rich Western Australian shrublands: evaluating a neutral model of biodiversity. Oikos 118: 1349-1362.

Millington, J.D.A., Wainwright, J., Perry, G.L.W., Romero-Calcerrada, R. and Malamud, B.D. 2009. Modelling Mediterranean landscape succession-disturbance dynamics: a landscape fire-succession model. Environmental Modelling & Software 24: 1196-1208

O'Sullivan, D. and Perry, G.L.W. 2009. A discrete space model for continuous space dispersal processes. Ecological Informatics 4: 57-68.

Perry, G.L.W. and Bond, N.R. 2009. Spatially explicit modeling of habitat dynamics and fish population persistence in an intermittent lowland stream. Ecological Applications 19: 731-746.

Perry, G.L.W., Enright, N.J., Miller, B.P. and Lamont, B.B. 2009. Nearest-neighbour interactions in species-rich shrublands: the roles of abundance, spatial patterns and resources. Oikos 118: 161-174.

Millington, J.D.A., Romero-Calcerrada, R., Wainwright, J. and Perry, G.L.W. 2008. An agent-based model of Mediterranean agricultural land-use/cover change for examining wildfire risk Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11 (4) <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/4/4.html>

Perry, G.L.W., Enright, N.J., Miller, B.P. and Lamont, B.B. 2008. Spatial patterns in species-rich sclerophyll shrublands of southwestern Australia. Journal of Vegetation Science 19: 705-716.

Esther, A., Groeneveld, J, Enright, N.J., Miller, B.P., Lamont, B.B., Perry, G.L.W., Schurr, F.M. and Jeltsch, F. 2008. Assessing the importance of seed immigration on coexistence of plant functional types in a species-rich ecosystem. Ecological Modelling 213: 402-416.

Perry, G.L.W. and Millington, J.D.A. 2008. Spatial modelling of succession-disturbance dynamics in forest ecosystems: concepts and examples. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution & Systematics. 9: 191-208.

Perry, G.L.W. and Enright, N.J. 2007. Contrasting outcomes of spatially implicit and spatially explicit models of vegetation dynamics in a forest-shrubland mosaic. Ecological Modelling. 207: 327-338.

Millington, J.D.A., Perry, G.L.W. and Romero-Calcerrada, R.C. 2007. Regression techniques for examining land-use/cover change: a case study of a Mediterranean landscape. Ecosystems. 10: 562-578

Book chapters (since 2007)

O'Sullivan, D., Millington, J.D.A., Perry, G.L.W. and Wainwright, J. (2012) Agent-based models – because they’re worth it? In: Heppenstall, A.J., Crooks, A.T., See, L.M. and Batty, M. (Eds.) Agent-Based Models of Geographical Systems . Springer.

Perry, G.L.W. 2009. Modelling and simulation. In: Castree, N., Demeritt, D., Liverman, D. and Rhoads, B. (eds) A Companion to Environmental Geography. John Wiley and Sons, UK., p. 336-357. p. 155-167

Software

I have designed an Excel add-in for spatial point pattern analysis called SpPack. This software can perform nearest-neighbour methods, refined nearest neighbour, Ripley's K, the neighbourhood density (pair correlation) function, and various Monte Carlo and goodness-of-fit procedures. SpPack is used across a range disciplines, for both research and teaching, and is described in a paper in Environmental Modelling & Software. This software is freely available on email request.

I am on the editorial board of Plant Ecology, Geography Compass and Forests MDPI; I also regularly provide peer reviews for journals in the fields of plant ecology and ecological modelling and statistics, and for international funding agencies. I am on the council of the New Zealand Ecological Society.

Andrew Pegman (started 2006) - Seed dispersal and forest demographics of Miro, Prumnopitys ferruginea, Podocarpaceae, and Puriri, Vitex lucens, Verbenaceae (co-supervised with Prof. Mick Clout, School of Biological Sciences).

Xilai Li (started 2008) - Spatial dynamics of Kobresia populations as affected by human disturbance on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (co-supervised with Prof Gary Brierley, SEnv).

Claas Damken (started late 2008) - Insect in mountainous landscapes: implications of fragmentation and climate change (co-supervised with Dr Jacqueline Beggs, School of Biological Sciences).

Tom Etherington (started early 2010) - Mapping landscape connectivity risk for invasive species using spatially and temporally explicit GIS modelling (co-supervised with Prof. Mick Clout, School of Biological Sciences).

Narkis Morales (started mid-2010) - Viability of native vegetation patches in the assessment of landscape conservation and restoration plans: the role of regeneration process in Beilschmiedia tawa forest remnants (co-supervised with Dr. Bruce Burns, School of Biological Sciences).