Science at the Local Library: Protecting the Cumberland Plain from Climate Impacts

Celebrate Science Week! Join Professor Paul Rymer as he outlines the impact of climate change on the Cumberland Plain in Western Sydney.

What you’ll learn in this educational session is how you can help protect the Cumberland Plain from climate impacts. The session is free, but bookings are essential. 

About the Cumberland Plain

If you volunteer with our Bushcare team, you’re helping conserve a portion of the Cumberland Plain that exists in Penrith! 

The gentle topography and richer soils of the Cumberland Plain in Western Sydney have made the area very attractive for a range of land uses. Much of the native vegetation of the Cumberland Plain has thus been cleared and its biodiversity is now identified as among the most threatened in New South Wales. Today only 12 percent of the original extent of pre-European native vegetation cover on the Cumberland Plain remains as intact bushland (Tozer 2003). In 1997, Cumberland Plain Woodland, the most widespread community found in the region, was listed as an Endangered Ecological Community under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. Since then a further 11 vegetation communities have been listed as endangered, with the result that most of the native vegetation of the Cumberland Plain is now listed. [excerpt from NSW Environment and Heritage]

About Professor Paul Ryan

Dr. Paul Rymer is a plant evolutionary ecologist. Growing up in the Blue Mountains, he was inspired by nature and the capacity for plants to not only cope with major disasters (e.g. bushfires and drought) but thrive in their wake with an amazing diversity of forms and functions.

PauI completed a BSc at the University of Western Sydney before graduating from his PhD at the University of Wollongong. He then worked in the UK as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford and Marie Curie Incoming International Fellowship at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Imperial College London. Upon returning to Australia Paul worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney before starting at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment.