DrMatthew Clark

I study the causes and consequences of human behavior in forests, rangelands, and coral reefs. This work ranges from local to global scale, with local and regional projects primarily focused on southern and eastern Africa. As a postdoc in the Thriving Oceans Research Hub, my main focus is using a global dataset on fisheries biomass and species composition from 3,000+ coral reefs to understand global trends in how reef fisheries are responding to human activities such as overfishing, conservation, and increasing atmospheric CO2. After identifying these general trends, we can assess nested locations (reefs, reefscapes, and ecoregions) that are doing better than expected over time (bright spots) and conduct in-depth fieldwork in those places to figure out what makes them different.

Before coming to the University of Sydney, I worked as a postdoc/research associate in the Catalyzing Conservation group at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, working in close collaboration with Conservation International and the Nature Conservation Foundation. This research broadly focused on how and why conservation initiatives do or do not 'go to scale.' See a press release about some of this work here.

I completed my PhD in the Human-Environment Systems research group at Boise State University, while spending a significant amount of time as a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture. My research with these collaborators used cultural evolutionary theory to understand the processes that lead some groups to sustainably manage common-pool resources and others to outstrip the environment. The empirical backdrop for this research is the small-scale fishing and agricultural communities of Pemba Island, Tanzania where our research group operates a long-term field site. See a press release on some of this work here.