ProfessorBrett Bryan

Background. Growing-up in a farming family on a cropping/grazing property on Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, Professor Bryan learned early on in life the interdependencies between people and nature in land systems. He is now an internationally-recognised research leader focused on creating cost-effective policy and management solutions for the sustainability of coupled human and natural systems. He has expertise in the transdisciplinary application and development of data science, computational, and analytical methods for sustainability, in particular the integrated modelling and assessment of land-use dynamics and the impacts of global change.

Expertise. As a geographer, Professor Bryan has research interests at the human/environment interface combining aspects of land-use and management; agriculture and food security; water resources management; global change impact assessment, mitigation, and adaptation; biodiversity and ecosystem science; and socio-economic and policy analysis. He has conducted research from the property and catchment scales, ranging through to regional, continental, and global scales. In particular, he has worked extensively throughout Australia and China.

Employment. Professor Bryan currently holds the position of Deakin Distinguished Professor of Global Change, Environment, and Society in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, at Deakin University Australia, located at the Melbourne Burwood Campus. Professor Bryan worked as a Principal Research Scientist and Project Leader in CSIRO for nearly 14 years, and before that, held the position of Senior Lecturer and Education Coordinator in Spatial Science at the University of Adelaide.

Research. With total career research funding of over $28.3 million, Professor Bryan has successfully delivered over 75 individual projects including large, integrated assessments aimed at understanding and managing complex social-ecological systems such as the $5m Lower Murray Landscape Futures which involved over 40 scientists from multiple organisations. He has a global network, having worked with over 620 collaborators from dozens of countries and scores of organisations spanning research, government, community, and industry sectors. Professor Bryan has published over 200 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, as well as 7 book chapters, 95 conference papers, and 39 scientific reports. His work has been cited over 20,000 times, with a h-index of 75 and i-10 index of 195. He has led 2 papers in Nature and regularly publishes his work in top international journals including Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, Nature Communications, The Lancet Planetary Health, and One Earth. Professor Bryan has given 15 national and international keynote presentations including at the International Geographical Union International Workshop on Geography and Sustainability in 2021. 

Impact. Professor Bryan’s work has had impact at multiple scales. He led the land-use modelling component of the Australian National Outlook with the dual role of modelling lead and science lead where he developed the original Land Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model and used it to assess future scenarios for land-use, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability for Australia. Taking a transdisciplinary approach working with stakeholders and the community, he has developed the Forrest and District Community Plan, a decadal strategy for investment in sustainable development for the Otway region in southern Victoria. His work has guided the investment of $69 million in regional natural resource management in the SA Murray-Darling Basin, and he has used participatory modelling to inform priorities for action towards sustainable futures with the Goulburn-Murray Resilience Taskforce. His work has underpinned the Australian National Outlook’s in both 2015 and 2019, ClimateWorks’ Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation report, Victoria's Net Zero by 2050 Emissions Reduction Target, the SA Government Carbon Neutral Adelaide plan, multiple aspects of Chinese government environmental policy and its implementation, and the 2022 Australian State of the Environment Report. He is currently working towards sustainable net zero sectoral pathways for Australia.

Current focus. Professor Bryan established and is Director of the Planet-A Sustainability Science research laboratory at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. A key focus of his lab is on the sustainability of the global food system and finding options for feeding humanity within the Earth’s environmental limits, and on modelling pathways for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. His current works spans diverse environmental and sustainability issues including: the impacts of policy on human and natural systems; ecosystem services; land degradation; air pollution and human health impacts; urbanization; water resource management and water scarcity; climate change vulnerability, mitigation, and adaptation (particularly smallholders); and food security and agricultural impacts on the environment. He leads the Land-Use Futures project, a national-scale, transdisciplinary collaboration with ClimateWorks Centre and CSIRO, where he is building the second generation LUTO model and searching for sustainable solutions for Australia’s land-use and food system. He is also Director of Deakin’s Postgraduate Sustainability program and teaches undergraduate students about policy for sustainability.