DrCarla Archibald

I am a Lecturer in Environmental Sustainability and an ARC Early Career Industry Fellow in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University, where I work on one of the most urgent challenges in conservation: how do we protect wildlife when the food we eat, the farms we rely on, and a warming climate are all reshaping the land at once?

My research sits at the intersection of biodiversity conservation, environmental policy, climate change and food systems. I develop practical, evidence-based tools that help industries, land managers, and governments act on nature, identifying which species are most at risk from agriculture and climate change ^[1,2], what conservation actions work on working farms ^[3,4,5], and how those actions can be scaled up under different futures ^[6,7]. Much of this work is grounded in private land conservation and understanding how farmers and landholders can be supported to protect species and landscapes alongside productive agriculture ^[4,5,8].

I am currently leading an ARC Early Career Industry Fellowship with WWF-Australia (2026–2029) to embed biodiversity outcomes alongside agricultural production, building the kind of decision-ready science that links agriculture's footprint to real outcomes for species and people on the ground. I also serve as an Associate Editor for Conservation Science and Practice and teach into Deakin's Bachelor of Environmental Science (BESS) and Wildlife Conservation programs as well as the Master of Sustainability programs, including units in GIS, research methods, and global environmental change.

Before Deakin, I completed my PhD at the University of Queensland (conferred in 2020) and held a postdoctoral position examining private land conservation for koalas under climate change. My work has contributed to national conservation and land-use planning initiatives through partnerships with Climateworks Centre, CSIRO, Biodiversity Conservation Trust and WWF-Australia, and I have published across conservation science and environmental policy ^[9,10,11,12].

🌱 Conservation Crossroads Lab

I lead the Conservation Crossroads Lab, where we work at the intersection of conservation, climate, and communities. Our research spans ecology, spatial modelling, sustainable agriculture, social science, and policy across Australia and beyond. Collaboration is central to everything we do, whether that means working alongside researchers across disciplines or co-designing tools and outcomes with industry partners, NGOs, and land managers who will put them into practice. We believe the best science is both rigorous and genuinely useful in the real world. I am also affiliated with Deakin's Planet-A Sustainability Science Group, a multidisciplinary team advancing integrative science for a healthier planet. I supervise a growing group of research students across PhD, Masters, and Honours levels, including a cotutelle PhD student jointly conferred by Deakin and IIT Madras. Please review the My Research page for potential Honours and Masters research projects. 

Selected publications

A complete and up-to-date publication list can be found in the My Research Outputs tab. 

1. Hu T, Archibald CL, Wang J et al. (2026). Historical land cover composition and recent land cover change drive disproportionate range exposure across Australian species. Biological Conservation 319, 111889.
2. Archibald CL, Summers DM, Graham EM, Bryan BA (2024). Habitat suitability maps for Australian flora and fauna under CMIP6 climate scenarios. GigaScience 23, giae002.
3. Archibald CL, Dade MC, Sonter LJ et al. (2021). Do conservation covenants consider the delivery of ecosystem services? Environmental Science & Policy 115, 99–107. 
4. Archibald C, Fielding K, Bekessy S et al. (2025). Can conservation covenants help sustain nature and livelihoods? Factors associated with conservation covenant adopters in Australia. People and Nature 7(8), 1851–1864. 
5. Archibald C, Williams BA, Tulloch AIT et al. (2025). Systematic conservation planning for private land can no longer overlook people. SSRN preprint. 
6. Pan X, Wang J, Hadjikakou M, Williams N, Archibald CL et al. (2025). Achieving nature-positive net-zero pathways and a thriving agri-food industry in Australia without stressing water catchments. ESS Open Archive.
7. Clark M, Pienkowski T, Jagadish A, Archibald CL et al. (2024). Forecasting adoption with epidemiological models can enable adaptively scaling out conservation. One Earth 7(10), 1820–1832.
8. Williams B, Archibald CL, Brazill-Boast J et al. (2024). Optimal investments in private land conservation depend more on landholder preferences than climate change. Environmental Research Letters.
9. Archibald CL, Barnes MD, Tulloch AIT et al. (2020). Differences among protected area governance types matter for conserving vegetation communities at risk of loss and fragmentation. Biological Conservation 247, 108533.
10. Archibald C, Friedman R (2023). Weaving nature into social safety nets. Nature Sustainability.
11. Zyngier RL, Archibald CL, Bryan BA et al. (2024). Knowledge co-production for identifying indicators and prioritising solutions for food and land system sustainability in Australia. Sustainability Science 19(6), 1897–1919.
12. Mills M, Bode M, Mascia MB, Archibald CL et al. (2019). How conservation initiatives go to scale. Nature Sustainability 2(10), 935–940.