Dr Noel Preece ~ Adjunct Associate Professor

Dr Noel Preece is a conservation ecologist with expertise in northern and central Australian ecosystems, fauna, vegetation, fire, pests and carbon sequestration. His professional career began as a Ranger in NSW, and he progressed to Regional Manager in the NT.

Currently a Director of Biome5 since 2006, Noel was a Director of Biocarbon PL until 2016, and of EcOz Environmental Services in Darwin from 1990 to 2006. He was a Director of Discovery Ecotours and Desert Discovery from 1987 to 2000 in central and northern Australia. He has directed major environmental impact assessment projects for gas pipelines, subdivisions, biofuel plants, and run many smaller environmental projects in Qld, NT and WA. He has a long involvement with indigenous enterprises, helping to set up the first Indigenous Protected Area, Paruku, in Western Australia, and with other Indigenous tourism, natural resource management (Yugul Mangi Women Rangers) and others. He has conducted many biodiversity surveys in WA, NT and nth Qld.

Noel has worked on hundereds of diverse projects such as operations manuals on pests and fire for an indigenous organisation in the Kimberley, fauna and flora studies in the Gulf Region and on Cape York, Northern Territory and Western Australia, and IEK and savanna burning on the Cape.  He also published a comprehensive a conservation assessment of Eucalypts and Corymbia of the savanna region.

Noel and Penny van Oosterzee set up the Thiaki ARC Linkage rainforest reforestation project (27,000 trees on 16 ha replicated plots) on their property in the Atherton tablelands and are currently managing the project and researching various aspects of the experiment. They have published several papers related to this work. They planted another 11,000 trees in Feb-March 2013 on another 12 ha for another experiment funded by the Biodiversity Fund.

Noel was a Chief Investigator on a JCU ARC Linkage project on accelerating species richness gains and carbon sequestration in secondary regrowth in Nth Qld with Drs Susan Laurance, Stephen Goosem, Bill Laurance, Rod Fensham and others. Noel is also studying the causes of faunal declines across the savanna region and means of reversing these declines.

Noel holds a PhD (CDU) on Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management, and worked with Miriwoong Gadjerong people in the Kimberley for part of his PhD. His MSc (UQ/NTU) was on ecology of desert fauna – reptiles and mammals. His first degree (BSc Macq) was on earth sciences and plant physiology, majoring in earth sciences and environmental law.

 

 

Experience

• 2012 to 2017 - Director, Biome5 Pty Ltd (Atherton)
• 2011 to 2014 - Chief Investigator, James Cook University (Cairns)
• 2009 to 2014 - Partner Investigator, Charles Darwin Uni (Darwin)

Research Disciplines

• Forestry sciences (3007)
• Ecology (3103)
• Microbiology (3107)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Marine systems and management (1805)

Memberships

• 2017 to 2020 - Councillor, Ecosystem Science Council
• 2016 to 2020 - Director, Ecological Society of Australia
• 1986 to 2019 - CEnvP, Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Preece N and Fitzsimons J (2022) Gaps in Monitoring Leave Northern Australian Mammal Fauna with Uncertain Futures. Diversity, 14 (3).
• Driscoll D, Garrard G, Kusmanoff A, Dovers S, Maron M, Preece N, Pressey R and Ritchie E (2021) Consequences of information suppression in ecological and conservation sciences. Conservation Letters, 14 (1).
• Palma A, Goosem M, Fensham R, Goosem S, Preece N, Stevenson P and Laurance S (2021) Dispersal and recruitment limitations in secondary forests. Journal of Vegetation Science, 32 (1).
• Hussain-Yusuf H, Stenos J, Vincent G, Shima A, Abell S, Preece N, Tadepalli M, Hii S, Bowie N, Mitram K and Graves S (2020) Screening for rickettsia, coxiella and borrelia species in ticks from Queensland, Australia. Pathogens, 9 (12).
• van Oosterzee P, Liu H and Preece N (2020) Cost benefits of forest restoration in a tropical grazing landscape: Thiaki rainforest restoration project. Global Environmental Change, 63.
• Crowley G and Preece N (2019) Does extreme flooding drive vegetation and faunal composition across the Gulf Plains of north-eastern Australia? Austral Ecology, 44 (7). pp. 1256-1270
• Cheesman A, Preece N, Van Oosterzee P, Erskine P and Cernusak L (2018) The role of topography and plant functional traits in determining tropical reforestation success. Journal of Applied Ecology, 55 (2). pp. 1029-1039
• Derhé M, Murphy H, Preece N, Lawes M and Menéndez R (2018) Recovery of mammal diversity in tropical forests: a functional approach to measuring restoration. Restoration Ecology, 26 (4). pp. 778-786
• Lawes M, Moore A, Andersen A, Preece N and Franklin D (2017) Ants as ecological indicators of rainforest restoration: community convergence and the development of an Ant Forest Indicator Index in the Australian wet tropics. Ecology and Evolution, 7 (20). pp. 8442-8455
• Preece N, Abell S, Grogan L, Wayne A, Skerratt L, Van Oosterzee P, SHIMA A, Daszak P, Field H, Reiss A, Berger L, Rymer T, Fisher D, Lawes M, Laurance S, McCallum H, Esson C and Epstein J (2017) A guide for ecologists: detecting the role of disease in faunal declines and managing population recovery. Biological Conservation, 214. pp. 136-146
• Preece N, Van Oosterzee P, Hidrobo Unda G and Lawes M (2017) National carbon model not sensitive to species, families and site characteristics in a young tropical reforestation project. Forest Ecology and Management, 392. pp. 115-124
• Goosem M, Paz C, Fensham R, Preece N, Goosem S and Laurance S (2016) Forest age and isolation affect the rate of recovery of plant species diversity and community composition in secondary rain forests in tropical Australia. Journal of Vegetation Science, 27 (3). pp. 504-514

More

ResearchOnline@JCU stores 38+ research outputs authored by Dr Noel Preece from 1984 onwards.

The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
Note: Map points are indicative of the countries or states that institutions are associated with.