Prof Tim Baker

2. How resilient are intact tropical forests to environmental change?

My research explores how the resilience of intact tropical forests depends on their composition, climate and dynamics. In both African and Amazonian forests we have shown how forest composition has altered in recent decades to favour more drought tolerant species; in Amazonia, we have shown how the impact of a short-term drought was most severe in forests that had a drier baseline climate. However, perhaps surprisingly, over recent decades, intact Amazonian forests have acted as a carbon sink.

I play a leading role in the development of ForestPlots.net which underpins this work – a global collaboration to collect, compile and analyse long-term, on-the-ground plot data on forest dynamics across the tropics. I am particularly interested in supporting the often under-appreciated, but crucial, botanical and taxonomic work that is needed to achieve consistent species identifications among sites. I also integrate our findings in national policy in tropical forest nations; for example, in Peru, our plot data was used to calculate emission factors for the national submission to the UNFCCC REDD+ programme, and supporting our forest monitoring network is now a national policy objective.

3. How did the diversity of tropical forests arise and what are the implications of evolutionary history for ecosystem function and conservation today?

I am fascinated by the mechanisms that have led to the high diversity of tropical forests and particularly how variation in life history strategies has shaped the diversification of tropical trees. My work has shown how species-rich lineages of Amazonian trees share the key trait of short generation times and that across the tropics, a ‘live fast, die young’ strategy underlies high species richness within the tree flora.

Our work has also documented patterns of evolutionary diversity across the forests of the neotropics and Americas, and explored the legacy of evolutionary history for current patterns of ecosystem function: we showed how tropical forests with greater evolutionary diversity – species from a wider range of the tree of life – have higher wood productivity.

• Carbon Storage in Amazonian Peatlands: Distribution and Dynamics
• Community-based monitoring of emission reductions - Amazonian Peatlands
• E FUNDIA
• History or Ecology? Untangling the Drivers of Diversification in the Tropics.
• MonANPeru: Monitoring Protected Areas in Peru to Increase Forest Resilience to Climate Change.

Qualifications

• PhD, Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Aberdeen
• MA, St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge

Student education

My first year teaching focuses on the importance of key ecological principles – niches and life history strategies, succession and disturbance and food webs – for management, and includes fieldwork to compare conservation management strategies in the Yorkshire Dales.

I teach key statistical and data visualisation tools to our second year students. Taught in R, the course includes linear models and multivariate methods as well as graphic design. I also teach the evolution, composition, diversity and land-use history of Mediterranean landscapes during our second year residential fieldcourses.

My final year teaching focusses on understanding the evolution, ecology and future of tropical forests. Taught through lectures and student-led seminars, we consider themes such as the resilience of tropical forest to environmental change over geological timescales, the role of ‘bottom-up’ or ‘top-down’ conservation in the tropics, and the possible trajectories of tropical forests under climate change. With our taught postgraduate students, I explore the advantages and challenges of community-led conservation in the tropics, through student-led seminars

Research groups and institutes

• Ecology and Global Change

Current postgraduate researchers

• Viviana Ceccarelli