Dr. Terry Parr

Terry has been closely involved in the development of long-term ecological research networks in the UK, Europe, and globally over the last decade. He is increasingly interested in the application of these networks to address contemporary issues such as climate change impacts and adaptation, integrated ecosystem assessment and the effects of environmental change on the sustainability of ecosystem services. Through his connections with ILTER, ALTER-Net and the Global Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), his interests are now on the development of large-scale earth-observation and informatics systems and their use in the management and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems. He leads the UKCEH activity on Monitoring & Observation Systems, working on the delivery of long-term, large-scale monitoring and experiments for the collection, provision and modelling of biodiversity data.

He also represent this activity on UKCEH’s Environmental Information Strategy Group. He is the current UK representative and an ex-Chair of the International Long-term Ecological Research Network (ILTER, with 40 member networks around the globe) and ALTER-Net (A Long-term Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Network with 22 European partners in 17 countries). He is currently the Co-ordinator of an EC-funded project on the "Role of Biodiversity in Climate Change Mitigation in Latin America" (ROBIN) which is using a whole systems approach to develop better options for managing and monitoring tropical forest landscapes and the ecosystem services they provide. This work is directly relevant to the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).