extreme environments

Graham Peterson
Uluru, Australia

The Australian Outback is one of the most remote and extreme locations on our planet.  This desert terrain hosts some of the rarest plants and animals, and is home to the oldest culture on Earth, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.  In recent decades, the heart of the Outback, specifically Uluru-Kata-Tjuta National Park, has become an increasingly popular destination for tourists and scientists alike.

I propose to design an integrated Outback Research Center [ORC] at the base of Uluru, a World Heritage Site and one of the continent’s largest monoliths.  Here, interested students in the fields of GEOLOGY, ECOLOGY, and ANTHROPOLOGY will have the unique opportunity to live and conduct research for periods of six months to a year.  Fellows in this program will be privileged to reside in one of the oldest and most preserved sites in the world, while studying the enchanting flora and fauna that habitate solely in this extreme environment.