Welcome to Predirections

What’s this all about?

Climate, biodiversity and water: predictions, redirections, adaptations. Personal reflections and actionable information from a working scientist.

Why the name?

It’s a bit of a play on words. My background is in ecology and biodiversity science, with a special focus on freshwater ecosystems. The name combines many of my interests and the theme of this blog: prediction and anticipation of future change, redirection of effort and resources, adaptation of future policy and management to unknown environmental threats, and, more generally, solutions to the joint biodiversity loss-climate change challenge.

I’ve spent my career in ecology documenting the decline of biodiversity and ecosystems, much of which has been focused on freshwater ecosystems. Now it’s time to build on this. I want to raise awareness for solutions to the challenges we face with biodiversity loss and climate change. I spend much of my time wondering what the world will look like for my two young kids and feel a strong need to put myself in a position to make a difference.

We know enough now about the detrimental effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. Now is the time for action.

With this newsletter, I hope to achieve many things. First and foremost to share my journey in transitioning to solutions-focused research, but also to highlight interesting research in this sphere and new solutions-focused research, as well as documenting some of my own lab’s (tonkinlab.org) research (biodiversity science for a changing world) for a wider audience.

I will spend time exploring the levers we have available on a global scale that tackle issues with biodiversity, climate change and water management. Biodiversity loss and climate change are fundamentally intertwined. The levers we can pull that address this challenge are necessarily complex and cross-disciplinary, from economics to social science (more here and here). Most interesting to me are the known and unknown connections among these fields and challenges. Find more about my motivations here.

About me

I am an Associate Professor and Rutherford Discovery Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. I am an ecologist and biodiversity scientist, teacher and father of two young kids.

You can find out more about my research and lab at tonkinlab.org.

This is me recently accepting the New Zealand Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize.

Why subscribe?

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.

Stay up-to-date

You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.