Carley Fuller Email & Phone Number

I have long been passionate about making agriculture more ecologically sustainable by introducing and improving technologies that intensify the productivity of the land already producing food, feed, and fibre wherever possible. I graduated with an B.S. in Plant Science (2014) from the University of Florida, where I was trained as a crop ecologist. I was awarded a Fulbright research scholarship (2015) to put my training into practice in the northeast of Brazil, where I spent a year assessing the impacts of the Brazilian government’s market guarantee schemes designed to improve the sustainability of smallholder farming practices. More recently, I have become convinced that the same innovation and intentionality applied to agricultural intensification can and should be applied to spatially directing agricultural expansion, where intensification is insufficient. Decisions about land-use change should be data-driven to optimize conditions for productivity and minimize impacts on essential ecological processes and natural carbon sequestration. In 2017 I moved to Tasmania to do a PhD researching just that. I have since published 2 articles in peer-reviewed journals using geospatial analytical skills to assess agricultural expansion’s impact on deforestation dynamics in the humid tropics; my pending publications apply systematic mammal camera trapping and machine learning for rapid species identification to improve the process of conservation triage, ultimately optimising trade-offs between the production quota that necessitates the expansion of timber plantations and the need to ensure stewardship of threatened species’ and communities. After submitting my doctoral dissertation in December 2021, I chose to put my research experience, cross-cultural and communication skills, and analytical abilities to use as an Environmental Consultant with RMCG, based in Hobart.