Simon Haberle, BA, PhD (ANU)
Senior Fellow, Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program and Director, Centre for Archaeological Research

simon.haberle@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Simon Haberle is a Senior Fellow in the Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program and the Department of Archaeology and Natural History. He completed his PhD at ANU on the Late Quaternary Environmental History of the Tari Basin, Papua New Guinea, in 1994. While holding postdoctoral positions at the Smithsonian (STRI, Panama) and at the University of Cambridge he continued to pursue his interest in the role of past climate change and human activity on tropical and temperate ecosystems through work in the Amazon Basin and southern South America. His research is currently focussed on the application of high-resolution palaeoecological analysis to our understanding of the impact of climate variability and human activity on terrestrial ecosystems of the Pacific and Indian Oceans during the Holocene. He is also developing e-Research tools in palaeoecology such as the Australasian Pollen and Spore Atlas and the PalaeoWorks website. He is currently using his knowledge of Australian pollen to explore the impact of atmospheric pollen and spores on respiratory health.

Research Interests

Palaeoecology, Palynology; Palaeoclimatology; Fire History, Indian Ocean, Melanesia, Australia and Pacific Islands; See interview in Quarterly Bulletin, Dec 2003 (Download PDF); see PalaeoWorks website for full details on research and publication downloads.

Key Publications

• Prehistoric human impact on rainforest biodiversity in highland New Guinea, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362: 219-228, 2007.
• (with J. Tibby, S. Dimitriadis, and H. Heijnis) The impact of European occupation on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem dynamics in an Australian tropical rain forest, Journal of Ecology 94: 987-1002, 2006.
• A 23,000-yr pollen record from Lake Euramoo, Wet Tropics of NE Queensland, Australia , Quaternary Research 64: 343-356, 2005.
• (with G.S. Hope) The history of the human landscapes of New Guinea , In A. Pawley R. Attenborough, J. Golson and R. Hide (eds) Papuan Pasts: Cultural, Linguistic and Biological Histories of Papuan-Speaking Peoples, pp.541-554. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 2005.
• (with K.D. Bennett) Postglacial formation and dynamics of North Patagonian Rainforest in the Chonos Archipelago, Southern Chile , Quaternary Science Reviews 23: 2433-2452, 2004.
• (with T.P. Denham, C. Lentfer, R. Fullagar, J. Field, M. Therin, N. Porch and B. Winsborough) Origins of agriculture at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of New Guinea, Science 301: 189-193, 2003.

Career Highlights

Elected Chair of the College Forum (CAP 2007-2008); Director of the Centre for Archaeological Research (2006-2007); President of the Australasian Quaternary Association (2000-2004); QEII (ARC) Research Fellow investigating the impact of El Niño-related climate variability on tropical rain forest ecosystems of the Western Pacific (1998-2004); Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dept. of Plant Sciences, Cambridge University (1995-1997); Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama (1994-1995).