Profile
Associate Professor Grahame Applegate is a forestry specialist with over 30 years experience as a forest scientist and manager involved in tropical forest management, including sandalwood in northern Australia, community forestry and climate change in the tropics in many countries around the Pacific and Asia - particularly Indonesia, where he worked for 15 years providing scientific inputs to the private sector and policy inputs to the Government of Indonesia at national and sub-national level. Much of his work in Indonesia has recently focused on climate change (REDD+), community fire management, sustainable natural forest management, environmental issues concerning the renewable and non-renewable resources sector, the development of methods to understand tropical peat fire behaviour, gas emissions from tropical peat and rehabilitation of the peat swamp forests by hydrological rehabilitation and reforestation at a landscape level by planting natural peat forest species and assisting in the natural regeneration of peat swamp species.
Currently he is an Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, Tropical Forests and People Research Centre at UniSC, Australia and a Board Member of Asia-Pacific Forest Network (APFNet). He is also the Peat and Fire Science Coordinator for a NASA funded Tropical Peat Fire Research Project in central Kalimantan, Indonesia which is undertaking research in "Incorporating, Quantifying and Locating Fire Emissions from Tropical Peat Lands".
In late 2017, he was the Team Leader of an ACIAR funded project in PNG "Enhancing community forestry in Papua New Guinea" and a peat fire researcher on an ACIAR funded peat fire project in Indonesia, "Improving community fire management and peatland restoration in Indonesia". Grahame Applegate joined the Tropical Forests and People Research Centre at USC in May 2016 in the role of Principal Research Fellow.
Connect with Grahame Applegate on LinkedIn.
Professional memberships
- Institute of Foresters of Australia
Current research projects
- Enabling Community Forestry in Papua New Guinea
- Improving community fire management and peatland restoration in Indonesia
- Incorporating, Quantifying and Locating Fire Emissions from Tropical Peat Lands - Filling a Critical Gap in Indonesia’s National Carbon Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) Capabilities for Supporting REDD+ Activities
Past research projects
- Phase 1 - Incorporating, Quantifying and Locating Fire Emissions from Tropical Peat Lands - Filling a Critical Gap in Indonesia’s National Carbon Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) Capabilities for Supporting REDD+ Activities.
Research areas
- Rainforest ecology
- Tropical peatland restoration
- Tropical peatfire behaviour and community management
- Community and smallholder forest management
Grahame Applegate's research interest is in tropical rainforest ecology and restoration, tropical peatland restoration, small holder and community forest management, and peat fire behaviour.