This seminar is hosted by the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests

Speaker: Mike Harfoot, Senior Ecosystem Modelling Scientist, United Nations Environment Programme, World Conservation Monitoring Centre

In the face of present global change, decision-makers across government and industry urgently require information to adjust the trajectory of human development and allow human societies to negotiate the environmental threats facing them. Robust predictive models will be central to this strategic undertaking and mechanistic models that can integrate ecology with socio-economic and abiotic earth system components will be particularly powerful (Mace, 2013).

The Madingley Model (Harfoot et al., 2014; Purves et al., 2013) is one approach to model the structure and function of whole ecosystems that might enable such an integrated view of ecology within the earth system. Mike Harfoot will describe this novel model type and the patterns of ecosystem structure and function that emerge, how it is being applied to study ecosystems under global change, how it is intended to develop it and how it might, in the future, integrate with other components of the earth system.

Mike Harfoot is based at United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre and Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK. Mike studied chemistry and computer science at Bristol University before completing a PhD in modelling biogeochemistry at Cambridge University. Across his research Mike has been applying dynamic mechanistic modelling approaches in addition to statistical analysis. Mike’s interests are in modelling whole ecosystems within an earth systems context, natural limitations and patterns that emerge from fundamental ecological processes and how ecosystems and the services they provide might respond under pressures arising from a range of human activities.

OCTF seminar followed by drinks at the King's Arms pub

All welcome. To book a place, please visit https://v1.bookwhen.com/octf