Rate My Professor Eddie Etten

Associate Professor Eddie van Etten is an ecologist serving as Associate Professor in Ecology within the School of Science at Edith Cowan University, based at the Joondalup campus. He holds a Bachelor of Science from The University of Melbourne (1985), a Master of Applied Science from Curtin University of Technology (1987), and a Doctor of Philosophy from Curtin University of Technology (2000), for which he received the Chancellor's Commendation. Since joining Edith Cowan University in 2000, van Etten has built a distinguished career focused on terrestrial plant ecology and management across arid zones, urban areas, and forested ecosystems. His research addresses critical areas such as fire ecology and management, vegetation analysis and mapping, restoration ecology, arid zone ecology, and urban ecology. He also contributes leadership as Deputy Lead of the Conservation and Biodiversity Research Centre.

In teaching, van Etten delivers units including SCI5110/SCI3110 Waste Management, SCI2269 Silviculture, SCI1192 Physical Environments, SCI2115 Ecological Restoration, and SCI3150 Science Project. His prolific publication record includes seminal works like "Inter-annual Rainfall Variability of Arid Australia: greater than elsewhere?" (2009), "Fuel dynamics and vegetation recovery after fire in a semiarid Australian shrubland" (2015), "A continental-scale analysis of feral cat diet in Australia" (2015), "Response of a shrubland mammal and reptile community to a history of landscape-scale wildfire" (2015), and "Soil seed banks of fringing salt lake vegetation in arid Western Australia – density, composition and implications for postmine restoration using topsoil" (2014). Recent publications encompass "Urbanisation and specifically impervious cover alter riparian plant communities in a rapidly urbanising landscape in the Himalayas" (Jamtsho et al., 2025, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening), "Contrasting effects of impervious cover on riparian plant and soil bacterial communities in a rapidly urbanising Himalayan city" (Jamtsho et al., 2025, Science of the Total Environment), "Microplastic Pollution in Riparian Soils of the Rapidly Growing City of Thimphu, Bhutan" (Jamtsho et al., 2024, Water, Air, & Soil Pollution), and "Fire Impacts and Dynamics of Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest of East Java, Indonesia" (Sutomo & van Etten, 2023, Forests). With over 3,400 citations documented on Google Scholar, van Etten's contributions have profoundly influenced plant ecology, fire regime analysis, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem restoration practices globally.