PhD (UQ), BRTP (Hons) UQ
Lecturer, Griffith School of Environment
Contact details for Dr Karen Vella
Research Expertise:
Some of my research interests and experience:
- Exploring and advancing design features for contemporary planning arrangements to deal with complex issues and their evolution to deal with climate change adaptation.
- Factors and indicators of social resilience and integrating this into planning, monitoring and evaluation practice particularly for climate change.
- The effect of recent major institutional change in environmental planning on environmental outcomes in Queensland.
- The evolving role of Regional NRMs in governance and integrated environmental planning in Australia.
- Collective-action approaches for ecosystem management.
- Water and catchment planning, The Great Barrier Reef, tropical Queensland.
- Property rights, conflict and solutions in multiple-use landscapes.
- Governance research, institutional evaluation, social science, action-based learning and co-managed research.
Current Teaching Areas
- 4047ENV - Public Involvement and Community Development
Selected Publications
- Vella KJ, Marshall N, Dale A (2010) Ssocially-based approaches for climate change adaptation in the GBR, Great Barrier Reef Research Foundation Invited Paper.
- Vella KJ, Harrison D, Blankeney S, Sing N, Reghenzani J, Cosgrove M. (2010) Wet Tropics Farm Practice Benchmark Survey, 2008-09 Results, Terrain Natural Resource Management, Innisfail.
- Vella KJ, Sing N and Bass D (2009) Wet Tropics Reef Rescue Impact Report, Terrain NRM, Innisfail.
- Fenton M, Kelly G, Vella K and Innes J (2008) Chapter 23 Climate change and Great Barrier Reef: industries and communities, in Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef, Eds. Johnson JE and Marshall PA. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Australian Greenhouse Office, Australia.
- Vella KJ (2008) State-Wide ABCD Framework for Sugar Cane Environmental Management Systems, Terrain Natural Resource Management, Innisfail.
- Lahn J, Vella K, Innes J, and Prideaux B, (2007) Plan for a Social, Economic and Institutional Research and Monitoring Program for the Great Barrier Reef. Report to the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF), Cairns (99pp.)
- Smajgl A, Nursey-Bray N, Vella K and Herr A (2007) Building Institutional Incentives in Dying Communities, in A Smajgl and S Larson (Eds) Sustainable Resource Use: Institutional Dynamics and Economics, Earthscan, London.
- Haynes D, Waterhouse J, Innes J, Vella K, Furnas M, and Schaffelke B, (2005) Great Barrier Reef Water Quality Protection Plan (Reef Plan): First Annual Marine Monitoring Programme Report, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville.
- K.J. Vella, R.J. Williams, D.H. Walker, A. Smajgl, M.U.F. Kirschbaum, and R. Greiner (2005) Viewpoint: social and economic dimensions of involving savanna communities in carbon management systems, Australian Journal of Botany, Vol. 53 No. 7, Pages 741 – 747.
- Vella, K. & Nursey-Bray, M. 2005, Frameworks and analysis of institutional arrangements for multiple use: reflections—Etheridge Shire, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Townsville.
- Walker, D.H, Vella K and Kotzman M (2004) Regional Planning and the Sugar Industry, CSIRO, Townsville.