MA Cantab, PhD Reading, CBE, FRS
Yadvinder Malhi is Professor of Ecosystem Science at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Programme Leader of the Ecosystems Group at the Environmental Change Institute and the Jackson Senior Research Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford. He is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests, a network of university departments, NGOs and local businesses that seeks to address the major issues facing the future of tropical forests in the 21st century. In 2017, Professor Malhi was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2020, he was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Ecosystems Science.
Professor Malhi leads the Ecosystems Programme of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, which is composed of an Ecosystems Lab focused on the natural science of tropical forests and global change, and a Forest Governance Group focused on social science and policy issues around the protection of tropical forests. The programme currently hosts two research fellows, eleven postdoctoral researchers and nine DPhil researchers.
The broad scope of his research interests is the impact of global atmospheric change on the ecology, structure and composition of terrestrial ecosystems, and in particular temperate and tropical forests. This research addresses fundamental questions about ecosystem function and dynamics, whilst at the same time providing outputs of direct relevance for conservation and adaptation to climate change. Professor Malhi and his team apply a range of techniques including field physiological studies, large-scale and long-term ecological monitoring, satellite remote-sensing and GIS, ecosystem modelling, and micrometeorological techniques.
Professor Malhi’s team has a reputation in collecting intensive field data from fascinating but sometimes tough and remote forests, and linking these data to models and satellite data to address global issues surrounding tropical forests.
A full list of recent publications can be found on his personal website.