Rate My Professor Lynda Prior

Dr Lynda Prior is a Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She is a plant ecologist with expertise in the physiological responses of plants to environmental stresses including salinity, water-logging and drought. Prior to her academic career, she spent 12 years working on irrigation and salinity issues in horticultural crops in the Murray-Darling Basin. She subsequently moved to Darwin to complete her PhD, which examined how trees respond to the seasonal changes of the north Australian monsoon.

Following her doctorate, Dr Prior conducted post-doctoral research on the effects of fire on tree growth, mortality and recruitment. She joined the University of Tasmania in 2009, where she has led a continental-scale study of Callitris and analysed forest growth in relation to climate. Her current research, conducted in collaboration with Professor David Bowman, investigates the impacts of fire on the Tasmanian endemic conifer Athrotaxis cupressoides and the roles of fire and climate in shaping tree cover trends across northern Australia. Her work contributes to understanding forest ecology, savanna systems and fire regimes in Australia.