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RefNoEC/1985/38
Previous numbersCert XXI, 220
LevelItem
TitleWalker, Donald: certificate of election to the Royal Society
Date1983
DescriptionCitation typed
CitationDistinguished for his contributions to ecology and palaeoecology, principally of tropical rain forest. His studies first provided a synthesis of late- and post-glacial vegetational history in Cumbria, illuminating the origin and persistence of vegetation differences within a small but diverse region, providing a classic framework for subsequent investigators and illustrating his principal objective of relating ecology and vegetational history. Likewise, his fundamental study of the relation of peat stratigraphy to bog regeneration has provided a basis for much subsequent research. He founded the Department of Biogeography in the Australian National University, and his leadership has been responsible for great advances in the biogeography and Quaternary history of Australasia. He commenced pioneer research on the ecology and history of tropical rain forest in New Guinea, based on extensive studies of pollen morphology, vegetation patterns and physical geography, which has led to revision of widely-held views on the stability of tropical rain forest, the timing and magnitude of late-Quaternary climatic change in the tropics, and the age and nature of the impact of human activities. The extension of this work to South China aims to elucidate trans-equatorial synchroneity and direction of major environmental shifts in the Late-Quaternary. He has been responsible for initiating and applying new methods of palaeoecological research which are now much used. These include the application of numerical classification methods to pollen diagrams, the development of new statistical methods for describing the courses of individual pollen curves and therefore of population estimates and for determining the synchroneity or otherwise of changes in pollen frequency, and also the development of computer-assisted systems for pollen-morphological description.
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