Prof Tim Baker
- Position: Professor of Tropical Ecology and Conservation
- Areas of expertise: tropical ecology; conservation; global change; evolution; carbon cycle
- Email: T.R.Baker@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 8352
- Location: 10.27 Garstang Building
- Website: Bluesky | Googlescholar
Profile
Tropical forest landscapes play a key role in the Earth system as a store of carbon and biodiversity, source of global commodities and home to a wide variety of rural and urban communities. My research explores how the diversity of tropical forests arose, the resilience of these ecosystems to environmental change and how to manage and conserve remaining areas of intact forest.
Research interests
My work involves wide-ranging collaborations across evolutionary biology, palaeoecology, ecology, ecosystem science, vegetation modelling, remote sensing and environmental economics, and focuses on three broad questions:
1. How can we conserve tropical peatland landscapes?
Intact peatlands across the tropics contain some of the highest concentrations of carbon of any ecosystem on the planet. Keeping this carbon in the ground is important for meeting national and international goals to reduce the rate of climate change. My research aims to understand the distribution and ecology of tropical peatlands, as well as identifying and supporting pathways to manage these ecosystems sustainably. I work with government organisations, NGOs and companies to promote sustainable management of these ecosystems by linking their role in carbon storage with the implementation of ‘bio-businesses’ led by local communities.
Our work mapped the most extensive peatland complex in Amazonia for the first time, in northern Peru (en español, aquí). This work supported a $6 million investment in conservation in this region by the UN-backed Green Climate Fund. Sustainable harvesting of the fruit of the abundant Mauritia flexuosa, or aguaje, palm is an important part of this initiative. We have shown that sustainable harvesting of this fruit has a potential value that is similar to timber harvesting or oil extraction, and is a win-win for conservation by both protecting the health of the forest and increasing incomes for local communities. We have also developed a drone-based approach to count the abundance of this palm even in dense stands, which has been used by the Protected Areas Authority of Peru (SERNANP) to develop management plans with local communities at lower cost than was previously possible. Watch this video to find out more (en español, aquí):
2. How resilient are intact tropical forests to environmental change?
Understanding the trajectory of the structure and composition of intact tropical forests is important for understanding whether these ecosystems increase or reduce the rate of climate change. My research explores how the resilience of tropical forests to environmental change varies, depending on their composition and baseline climate. 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 decadal timescales, forest biomass continues to increase: the changes in biodiversity have increased the resilience of forest carbon stocks.
I have played a leading role in the development of the ForestPlots.net – a global collaboration to collect, compile and analyse long-term, on-the-ground data on forest dynamics from plots across the tropics – which underpins this work on the trajectory of tropical forests. I am particularly interested in developing approaches to achieve consistent species identifications among sites to foster collaboration among disciplines.
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.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Some research projects I'm currently working on, or have worked on, will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>- 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