Matt White has over 20 years experience working as a field botanist and plant ecologist for various Government and non-Government agencies in New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory. He has been working with the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning and its antecedent agencies for the past 14 years based at the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research. Matt’s primary research interests include community and ecosystem description, environmental history, ecological modelling and the development of spatially explicit models of biodiversity attributes at landscape and regional scales.
Matt’s skills lie in the disciplines of field botany, plant traits and functions, vegetation circumscription, remote sensing, ecological modelling, geographic information systems, eco-informatics, invasion ecology, biogeography, and earth sciences as they relate to ecosystem properties. Matt’s has produced 28 peer-reviewed papers, 2 Books, 1 Book Chapter, 11 published reports, 60 unpublished reports and 10 published broad-scale vegetation maps over a 25 year career
Key Publications:
Liu, C, White, M, and Newell, G. (2015). On the selection of thresholds for predicting species occurrence with presence-only data. Ecology and Evolution
Sinclair, S, Griffioen, P, Duncan, D.H., Millett-Rilly, J.E., White, M.D. (2015). Quantifying ecosystem quality by modeling multi-attribute expert opinion. Ecological Applications 25(6) 1453-1477. http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/14-1485.1
Williams, RJ, Wahren, CH, Stott, KAJ, Camac, JS, White, M., Burns, E., Harris, S, Nash, M, Morgan, JW, Venn, S, Papst, WA, Hoffmann, AA. (2015). An International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List ecosystems risk assessment for alpine snow patch herbfields, South‐Eastern Australia. Austral Ecology 40 (4), 433- 443 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aec.12266/epdf
Nicholson E, Regan TJ, Auld TD, Burns E, Chisholm LA, English V, Harris S, Harrison P, Kingsford RT, Leishman MR, Metcalfe DJ, Pisanu P, Watson CJ, White M, White MD, Williams DJ, Wilson B, Keith DA. (2014). Towards consistency, rigor and compatibility 1 of risk assessments for ecosystems and ecological communities across multi-jurisdictional regions. Austral Ecology DOI: 10.1111/aec.12148
Liu, C, White, M, and Newell, G. (2013). Selecting threshold for the prediction of species occurrence with presence-only data. Journal of Biogeography 40 778-789
Liu, C, White, M, Newell, G. (2013). Species distribution modelling for conservation planning in Victoria, Australia. Ecological Modelling 249 68-74.
Amos, N, Bennett, AF, Mac Nally, R, Newell, G, Pavlova, A, Radford, JQ, Thomson, JR, White, M and Sunnucks, P. (2012) Predicting Landscape-Genetic Consequences of Habitat Loss, Fragmentation and Mobility for Multiple Species of Woodland Birds. PLoS ONE 7 (2) e30888. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030888
Amos, JN, Bennett, AF, MacNally, R, Newell, G, Pavlova, A, Radford, JQ, Thomson, J.R, White, M and P. Sunnucks (2012) Predicting landscape genetic consequences of habitat loss, fragmentation and mobility for multiple species of woodland birds. Plos One 7(2): e30888.
Sharafi SM, Moilanen A, White M, Burgman M (2012) Integrating environmental gap analysis with spatial conservation prioritization: A case study from Victoria, Australia. Journal of Environmental Management 112, 240-251.
Fordham DA, Akçakaya HR, Araújo MB, Elith J, Keith D, Pearson R, Auld TD, Mellin C., Morgan J.W., Regan T.J., Tozer M., Watts M.J., White M., Wintle B., Yates C., Brook B.W. (2012).Plant demographic traits and landscape structure strongly affect estimates of extinction risk and range margin movement under climate change. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02614.x.
Gordon, A, Langford, WT, Todd, JA, White, MD, Mullerworth, DW, and Bekessy, SA. (2011). Assessing the impacts of biodiversity offset policies. Environmental Modelling & Software 26: 1481-1488.
Langford, WT,Gordon, A, Bastin L, Bekessy SA, White M, and Newell G. (2011) Raising the bar for systematic conservation planning. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 26: 634-640.
Catford, JA, Vesk, PA, White, MD and Wintle, BA. (2011) Hotspots of plant invasion predicted by propagule pressure and ecosystem characteristics. Diversity and Distributions 7: 1099–1110.,
Gordon A, Langford WT, White MD, Todd JA, Bastin L (2011) Modelling trade offs between public and private conservation policies. Biological Conservation 144: 558-556.
Kocev, D, Dzeroski, S,, White, MD, Newell, GR and Griffioen, P. (2009) Using single and multi-target regression trees and ensembles to model a compound index of vegetation condition. Ecological Modelling 220(8): 1159-1168
Sinclair, SJ, White, MD, and Newell, GR. (2010) How Useful Are Species Distribution Models for Managing Biodiversity under Future Climates? Ecology and Society 15(1): 8-20
Cunningham, SC, Mac Nally, R, Read, J, Baker, PJ, White, M, Thomson, JR and Griffioen, P. (2009) A robust technique for mapping vegetation condition across a major river system. Ecosystems 12(2): 207-219
White MD (2006) The Mallee vegetation of north western Victoria. Proc. R. Soc. Vic. 118:229–243