Cathy Yule to talk at ICTA on the deforestation of Malaysia's tropical forests

14/04/2015

Cathy Yule, an Australian aquatic ecologist, is professor of the Faculty of Sciences at Monash University Malaysia. She specialises in the biology of peat swamp forests and has lived in Malaysia for over 18 years, in which she has made outstanding scientific contributions in the field of tropical aquatic ecology, since she began her doctoral thesis on the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.
 
Her conference, entitled “Tropical Peat Swamp Forests, Oil Palms and Climate Change”, will present the situation suffered by the peat swamp regions of the tropical forests of Indonesia and Malaysia. These forests are unique and of global importance given their large biodiversity and role as carbon storers, but are now being seriously threatened. These tropical areas are disappearing rapidly, mainly due to their being transformed into oil palm plantations.
 
Dr Yule will analyse the environmental effects of these reductions in swamp forests and their implications for global climate change. The conference will take place on Friday 17 April at 3 pm at the ICTA-ICP building.