biology

Reinette Biggs

Reinette Biggs is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Reinette Biggs rather than just read about it. In short: Professor Reinette "Oonsie" Biggs is a South African sustainability scientist whose research focuses on food, water, and the benefits people receive from nature. Biggs is the co-director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, South Africa and a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University in Sweden.

Key takeaways

Reinette Biggs belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Reinette Biggs to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Reinette Biggs from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Professor Reinette "Oonsie" Biggs is a South African sustainability scientist whose research focuses on food, water, and the benefits people receive from nature. Biggs is the co-director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, South Africa and a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University in Sweden.

Early life and education Biggs was born in Windhoek, Namibia in 1979. Her parents were veterinarians who starting doing research, and involved Biggs and her siblings. Her father then was hired to work in South Africa's Kruger National Park and her family moved to Skukuza Restcamp where she grew up surrounded by wildlife and research. “Growing up in the Kruger National Park in South Africa as apartheid came to an end, Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs was confronted with a pressing question: Could her country's natural resources give people a chance to shake off poverty without undermining the resource base for future generations?” Biggs studied Geography (BSc) at the University of South Africa and Applied Environmental Sciences (BScHons) at the University of Natal. She then completed a master's degree, “Assessing biodiversity intactness” in environmental sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her Masters research lead to a development of a “biodiversity intactness index” with her advisor, Robert Scholes. This work, published in 2005, has since been widely used in analyses of changes in biological diversity. During this time she also worked on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, especially on Southern African Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (SAfMA) regional scale project. Following this work, she received a Fulbright Scholarship for doctoral studies in the US at the Center for Limnology, and obtained her doctorate in 2008 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Career and research Following her PhD, Biggs moved to the Stockholm Resilience Centre, at Stockholm University. She was a post-doctoral researcher from 2008 to 2010, and a researcher from 2010 until the present. She received a Branco Weiss Society in Science Fellowship from 2010 to 2015. While at Stockholm Resilience Centre she founded the Regime Shifts Database with Garry Peterson. She is also a co-founder, along with Garry Peterson and Elena Bennett, of the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene project, that aims to analyze, create, and enable the creation of socially and ecologically just, desirable and sustainable futures. In 2015, she was also awarded a South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Social-Ecological Systems and Resilience funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa. She also became co- director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, which takes a transdisciplinary approach to sustainability science connecting policy, practice and local stakeholders. She also is co-chair of Future Earth core project the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) and coordinates the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS). Biggs work has been frequently cited, according to Google Scholar, she has over 100 scientific publications that have been cited over 46 000 times, with an H-index of 69. Her most cited research has been on biodiversity, regime shifts, and ecosystem services.

References

External links Reinette Biggs publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Reinette Biggs

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Reinette Biggs claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Reinette Biggs before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Reinette Biggs ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Reinette Biggs

In research: Reinette Biggs appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Reinette Biggs in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Reinette Biggs is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1979 births, 21st-century South African scientists, 21st-century South African women scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Reinette Biggs outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Reinette Biggs in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Reinette Biggs means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Reinette Biggs out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Reinette Biggs in simple terms?

Why does Reinette Biggs matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Reinette Biggs?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Reinette Biggs.