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Advanced Search30-07-2001
Nominations for the 2001 W.E. Wood Award, Australia's most prestigious award for excellence in salinity research and development, are now open.
Australia's National Dryland Salinity Program (NDSP) sponsors this annual award for outstanding scientific or technical excellence, which recognises a unique contribution to managing salinity over a sustained period of many years.
Consideration is also given to applied, innovative technical responses to the salinity challenge from landholders, Landcare groups/co-ordinators, educators and others.
The award recalls Walter Ernest Wood, a railway engineer who observed the link between land clearing and the development of salinity in railway dams. His distinguished and far-sighted observations regarding this relationship were first published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia in March 1924.
The W.E. Wood Award is open nationally to individual or team efforts and will be judged on scientific content, innovation and the potential for being of lasting significance to Australia. Prizes to the value of $5000 will be awarded to the 2001 W.E. Wood recipient and presentation of the award will be made in September 2001.
Previous winners of the award include Dr Richard George, salinity manager for Agriculture Western Australia (2000) and Dr Tom Hatton, CSIRO Land and Water (1999).
NDSP national manager Richard Price says the prestigious award attracts a substantial prize and national recognition of work undertaken to overcome the salinity risk to Australia's land and water resources.
'Wood's hypothesis is still relevant after 77 years and was well ahead of its time,' he says. 'Recent winners of the W.E. Wood award have demonstrated today's salinity research and development continues to be equally innovative and of sufficient scientific quality and scope to be valued for many years to come.
'The 2001 W.E. Wood award will judge the worth and significance of Australian scientific or technical work submitted and will measure this work against community expectations and needs. I would encourage individuals or teams involved in innovative salinity research and development to nominate themselves or a colleague for this nationally-recognised award to further improve awareness and understanding of such important work.'
For further information please contact:
Email: land&wateraustralia@lwa.gov.au
Phone: 02 6263 6000