Interviews with Australian scientists

Teachers notes – Dr Alec Costin
Alpine ecologist

Introduction
Summary of career
Extract from interview and focus questions
Activities
Keywords

Introduction

Dr Alec Costin was interviewed in 2006 for the Interviews with Australian scientists series. By viewing the interviews in this series, or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge.

The following summary of Costin’s career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers notes. The extract highlights the benefit to Costin of visiting comparable ecosystems on different continents and the importance of reference areas to analyse environmental impact over time. Use the focus questions that accompany the extract to promote discussion among your students.

Transcript of interview.

You can order the audio CD from us for $15 (including GST and postage).

Summary of career

Alec Costin was born in 1925 in Roseville, on Sydney's North Shore. He attended Roseville Public Primary School and North Sydney Boys High School. He completed a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture at the University of Sydney on a cadetship with the New South Wales Soil Conservation Service. Costin then spent his honours year studying the ecology of the Australian Alps.

In the late 1940s, the Soil Conservation Service assigned him to open a soil conservation station based at Cooma and to assess NSW high mountain catchments, particularly Mt Kosciuszko.

In the early 1950s Costin received two research grants; the Thomas Lawrence Pawlett fellowship from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Sydney, which he used to analyse soil samples collected during his time with the Soil Conservation Service; and the Australian Services Canteens scholarship, which enabled him to research the high mountain ecology of Europe. When he returned to Australia he began working for the Victorian Soil Conservation Authority and was responsible for surveying the catchment areas of the Victorian Alps.

In 1955 Costin began a 19 year working relationship with CSIRO Division of Plant Industry. As head of the Alpine Ecology Unit he researched a variety of subjects related to the high mountain regions of NSW including the relationship between vegetation and water yield, periglacial activity in soil formation and carbon-14 dating.

In 1974 Costin became a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, working initially in the Research School of Pacific Studies and then at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies. During this time he collaboratively published a number of works including the seminal Kosciuszko Alpine Flora, Phosphorus in Australia, Harvesting Water from Land and Conservation.

After 1977 Costin retired to his farm in Bodalla where he applied the techniques of entire farm planning using the McHarg overlay technique which considers equally the most effective and sustainable conservation of agriculture, water, soil, wildlife and habitat.

Costin has been involved in the Australian Conservation Foundation since its inception in 1966. He is also a long-serving member of the Kosciuszko National Park's Advisory Committee.

In 1980 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science.

In 1986 he was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of service to conservation.

In 1988 he was the inaugural recipient of the McKell Medal for outstanding work in land and water conservation in Australia.

In 2001 Costin was awarded the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and science in land use ecology.

A collection of 190 plant specimens compiled by Costin are archived at the Australian National Herbarium. He collected these in the Victorian high country during 1949–1955 and the NSW Snowy Mountains during 1957–1964.

Extract from interview

Studying overseas mountains and Victorian catchments

...as I was enlarging my interest in high mountain ecology, it was suggested that I ought to see as much as I could of mountain environments elsewhere, and to work with overseas ecologists who were more familiar with them than I was. In particular, a visiting Swede, Professor Carl Skottsberg (the director of the Rijksmuseum) urged me to get over to Europe as soon as I could and said he'd arrange for me to get experience. I was lucky enough to get one of the well-endowed Australian Services Canteens scholarships that had just been initiated, and I was off.

I had no commitments other than a rucksack and the same suit of clothes that I wore all the time, so I could move wherever I wanted. That was a very enlightening time. Not only did I see what was going on in many of those mountain areas but I was able to work with some of the world's leading ecologists. This was invaluable to me, because ecology was undergoing lots of changes. Australia was still lumbered with the old-fashioned Clementian approach to ecology that was rife in North America for a long time. The ecologists in Europe, by contrast, were far more dynamic.

The importance of reference areas

Was your CSIRO work in the mountains related entirely to water yield, or to conservation of that environment as well?

It was during this time that we realised the importance of having permanent reference areas and areas that we documented over a long period of time. Sooner or later people will say, 'Oh well, you say it was like that, but prove it. It could easily have been due to this or that.' The long-term vegetation measurements which Dane Wimbush and I started – and which Dane and, later, university people continued after I had left CSIRO – have proved extraordinarily valuable. Their use exemplifies a rather interesting change of emphasis from water conservation to nature conservation. Those long-term measurements have been exceedingly important to national park management, in so far as we have not only documented the changes that have occurred exactly here and there but we have been able to relate them to environmental factors like heavy snow years, light snow years, cold winters, the occasional drought.

I believe that at those long-term study sites you developed a number of innovative ways of capturing the information...

That's true. To set this in context: the prerequisite to any ecological work in the field is equivalent to the three Rs, Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. You've got to have the basics right. It is essential to know the plant species properly, to know the soils properly, and to know the main components of the environment that you are dealing with. This sort of knowledge accumulates as you go on.

An edited transcript of the full interview can be found at http://www.science.org.au/scientists/ac.htm.

Focus questions

To understand Australian ecology better, why might it be helpful to study the ecology of the northern hemisphere?
All scientists know that accurate data collection is critical to good science. Who benefits from accurate science and how can it affect the world we live in?

Activities

Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.

Water resources

Know your catchments (LandLearn, Australia)
Students identify a catchment, then discuss its importance and the meaning of integrated catchment management.
Waterwatch education kit (Waterwatch Victoria, Australia)
Provides information on issues related to water quality and over 30 classroom and field activities for students.

Biodiversity

Conserving Australia's biological diversity: Teacher's notes and display materials (Australian Government Australian Government Department of the Environment and Water Resources)
This activity examines Australia's biological diversity, the benefits of conservation, threats to biological diversity, planning and management and what individuals can do to preserve biodiversity.

Ecosystem services

Ecosystem services – water purification (Science NetLinks, American Association for the Advancement of Science)
Uses the example of natural water purification to show students that healthy ecosystems provide services that are essential to life as we know it.

Population

Our population and its impact on the planet (Actionbioscience.org, USA)
Contains numerous ideas for class discussion and extension projects based on an article covering the consequences of a rising population on quality of life. The lesson is based on the article Population and the environment: The global challenge.

Keywords

ecosystem
water catchment
nature conservation
soil formation
quaternary ecology
water yield
sustainable tourism
hazard reduction burning