Professor Yadvinder Malhi

University of Oxford

Yadvinder Malhi is Professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests. He is a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society in the U.K. His work focuses on understanding the ecosystem ecology of tropical forests, and how this will change in the context of global atmospheric change and direct anthropogenic change. His research employs a range of tools from intensive field studies through to satellite monitoring and ecosystem modelling. Much of his work has focussed on Amazonia, where he was co-founder of the RAINFOR forest-plots network, and the ABERG elevational transect in the Andes. More recently, his research has also spread to the forests of Africa and Asia. He leads the GEM (Global Ecosystems Monitoring) network of intensive forest-monitoring sites across the tropics, which also involves understanding forest landscapes as social-ecological systems. More generally, he is interested in understanding how we can maximize the resilience and viability of the tropical-forest biome in the context of Anthropocene pressures, and in building the scientific capacity of tropical-forest nations.