Professor David Coomes

I hold the Professorship of Forest Ecology and Conservation at the University of Cambridge and am the co-director of the  Centre for Landscape Regeneration  and Centre for Earth Observation.  I also had the great honour to be the director of the Conservation Research Institute in the David Attenborough Building for five years.   

I started my career as a field ecologist seeking to understand why some tropical rainforests were much less diverse than others. I spent my time studying forests that were protected within nature reserves, miles from regions of agricultural expansion. But then my environmental conscience kicked in. Over the past 15 years, I have increasingly focused on applications of emergent technologies to quantify forest responses to human activities and provide evidence on ways to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services in human-dominated landscapes. For example, we have recently used airborne laser scanning and satellite imagery to track the remarkably successful 70-year recovery of forests in the mountains around Hong Kong, showing the effectiveness of fire suppression by government agencies and the resilience of these emergent forests to typhoon storms.

My leadership experiences in recent years have strengthened my conviction that researchers from diverse backgrounds must collaborate in small teams to address the interconnected crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. I look forward to being part of the interdisciplinary team at the Centre for Global Wood Security.