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Simon Lewis

Simon Lewis is a Professor of Global Change Science at University College London, as a half-time position. He holds an equivalent position at the University of Leeds. Simon was a Royal Society University Research Fellow (2004-2013), and in 2011 received a Philip Leverhulme Prize recognising the international impact of his research. In 2014 he was listed as one of the world’s most highly cited scientists in the Environment/Ecology field (see highlycited.com).  He gained a PhD from the University of Cambridge studying in the Department of Plant Sciences.

More about Professor Lewis

Simon is a plant ecologist by training with a central focus on the tropics and global environmental change including climate change.  His primary interest is in how humans are changing the Earth as a system. This is because one of the key issues facing humanity in the 21st century will be to address how a population of at least 8 billion can lead fulfilled lives without breaching environmental thresholds that may cause serious social, economic and environmental disruption or even more severe outcomes.

The more specific focus of his research is to gain a synthetic understanding of the recent, current, and likely future compositional and functional trajectory of the tropical forest biome. That is, to understand how and why tropical forests are composed of the tree species that form these forests, understand their important functions, such as how much carbon they store and cycle, and understand how these systems are changing due to local, regional and global environmental changes, and ultimately how they may change in the future. Dr Lewis’ research on tropical forests and climate change has been covered by newspapers, TV and radio worldwide, including the BBC, CNN and the Sun newspaper.  He is regularly asked for comments on tropical forests and climate change-related science.

Professor Lewis’ research intersects several policy-relevant areas, including tropical forests and their deforestation and degradation, climate change, biodiversity conservation, the prospects for indigenous peoples, rural poverty, and the global trade systems for products from tropical lands. Therefore, he is involved in both public understanding of science activities, such as writing newspaper commentary and giving public talks, and engages with policy makers. For example, Simon hit the headlines following a successful campaign to have a misleading article in the Sunday Times removed at the height of the poor reporting of climate change-related science following the collapse of the 2009 Copenhagen international negotiations and the release of some climate scientists' emails (aka ‘Climategate’). On the policy side, Simon assisted in the drafting of the Inter-Academies Panel (IAP) statement on tropical forests and climate change released to coincide with the Copenhagen UN conference on climate change. IAP is a group of 103 national academies of science, including all the G20 countries. Simon has been interviewed on the BBC’s Today program several times and occasionally contributes science-policy commentary pieces to the Guardian newspaper and the journal Nature.

Simon has supervised or co-supervised nine successful PhD students and currently supervises a further six students (three in Leeds). He has 31 successful grant applications from his PhD onwards that funded his PhD, post-doc and fellowship positions, obtained from ten funders including the National Environment Research Council, Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust, Government of Gabon, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation. He has published 12 book chapters, 3 major databases and 90 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals, including Science, Nature and the world’s oldest ongoing scientific journal, Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society. In addition, he has given invited lectures on every inhabited continent.

Professor Lewis founded and co-ordinates the only African network of on-the-ground tropical forests monitoring plots where individual trees are tagged and monitored over time, called AfriTRON (African Tropical Rainforest Observation Network). This requires extensive fieldwork in very remote locations. AfriTRON currently spans 10 countries across tropical Africa, and its sister network in South America (RAINFOR) consists of >500 locations and >300,000 trees being monitored. They are housed in a data repository, co-founded by Professor Lewis.

Teaching

 

I also teach on the following modules:

Undergraduate

Publications

To view Professor Lewis's publications, please visit UCL Profiles:

Publications

Research Interests

I have several major research programs ongoing:

Changing Ecology of Tropical Forests

This long-term project collects and collates long-term phytodemographic data to better understand large-scale changes within tropical forests to global environmental change. Currently funded by the EU GEOCARBON program, Phillip Leverhulme Prize and ERC Advanced Grant called T-FORCES, tropical forests and the changing earth system. Past funding from NERC, Royal Society, Moore Foundation.

Key papers

  • Lewis, S.L.et al. (2009). Changing ecology of tropical forests: Evidence and drivers. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 40 529-549. doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.39.110707.173345.
  • Pan, Y., Birdsey, R.A., Fang, J., Houghton, R., Kauppi, P.E., Kurz, W.A., Phillips, O.L., Shvidenko, A., Lewis, S.L., Canadel, J.G., Cias, P. Jackson, R.B., Pacala, S.W., McGuire, D.A., Piao, S., Shilong, R., Sitch, S., Hayes, D. (2011). A large and persistent carbon sink in the world's forests. Science, 333 (6045), 988-993. doi:10.1126/science.1201609

Ecology of African tropical forests

This long-term project collects and collates long-term phytodemographic data to better understand African tropical forests, as part of the African Tropical Rainforest Observatory Network. Currently funded by the EU GEOCARBON program, Phillip Leverhulme Prize and ERC Advanced Grant called T-FORCES, tropical forests and the changing earth system. Past funding from NERC, Royal Society, Moore Foundation.

Key papers

  • Lewis et al. 2013. Above-ground biomass and structure of 260 African tropical forests. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 368 (1625), 20120295. doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0295
  • Lewis, S.L., Lopez-Gonzalez, G., Sonke, B., Affum-Baffoe, K., Baker, T.R., Ojo, L.O., ...Wöll, H. (2009). Increasing carbon storage in intact African tropical forests. Nature, 457 (7232), 1003-1006. doi:10.1038/nature07771

Comparative ecology of tropical forests

The long-term project collects and collates long-term phytodemographic data to better understand the commonalities and differences amongst the three major tropical continents, Latin America, Africa and SE Asia, with a major focus on Amazonia, the Congo Basin and Borneo. Currently funded by the EU FP7 GEOCARBON program, Phillip Leverhulme Prize and ERC Advanced Grant called T-FORCES, tropical forests and the changing earth system. Past funding from NERC, Royal Society.

Key paper

  • Banin, L., Lewis, S.L. et al. (2014). Tropical forest wood production: A cross-continental comparison. Journal of Ecology, 102 (4), 1025-1037. doi:10.1111/1365-2745.12263
  • Banin, L., Feldpausch, T.R., Phillips, O.L., Baker, T.R., Lloyd, J., Affum-Baffoe, K., ...& Lewis, S.L. (2012). What controls tropical forest architecture? Testing environmental, structural and floristic drivers. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 21 (12), 1179-1109. Doi: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2012.00778.

Forest restoration

A project to quantify the impacts of different management techniques to restore degraded lands to increase carbon storage and biodiversity. We ask: Are such interventions worth the investment, or is merely waiting for nature to restore itself enough? Includes fieldwork in Uganda and Malaysia, led by PhD student Charlotte Wheeler, and funded by NERC and Permian Global.

Understanding Central African peatland complexes

This project was designed to discover and quantify the extent of peat underlying the swamp forest of the cuvette centrale of the Congo Basin, understand how the system functions and how much carbon the system stores. Consisted of several field campaigns to central Congo, led by Leeds PhD student Greta Dargie. Forthcoming papers likely soon. Funded by NERC, Wildlife Conservation Society and a Phillip Leverhulme Prize. See the article by the BBC.

Monitoring the forests of Gabon

I am assisting the government of Gabon in designing and implementing a national forest and carbon monitoring program, in collaboration with Duke University and University of California-Los Angeles.

Merging ground and satellite data to monitor tropical forest carbon stocks and fluxes

There is some controversy about both remotely sensed data for monitoring tropical forests and the carbon they store (as satellite data is an indirect estimate of forest biomass and carbon), and ground-based in situ inventory plot measurements (as they are generally at a very low sampling density, if we are concerned about making inferences over large spatial scales, and are also an indirect estimate of forest biomass and carbon). My view is that combining both techniques is essential to providing the most accurate measurements of tropical forest biomass and carbon storage. Funded by the EU GEOCARBON program, and ERC Advanced Grant called T-FORCES, tropical forests and the changing earth system.

Key papers

  • Mitchard, E.T.A., Feldpausch, T.R., Brienen, R.J.W., Lopez-Gonzalez, G., Monteagudo, A., Baker, T.R., Lewis, S.L., ...Phillips, O. (2014). Markedly divergent estimates of Amazon forest carbon density from ground plots and satellites. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 23 (8), 935-946. doi:10.1111/geb.12168
  • Saatchi, S., Harris, N.L., Brown, S., Lefsky, M., Mitchard, E.T.A., Salas, W., Zutta, B.R., Buermass, W., Lewis S.L., Hagen, S., Petrova, S., While, L., Silman, M., Morel, A. (2011). Benchmark map of forest carbon stocks in tropical regions across three continents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, 108 9899-9904. doi:10.1073/pnas.1019576108

Tropical soils

I have been collecting and analysing, for physical and chemical characteristics, soil from as many of the long-term forest inventory plots as possible, to begin improving our understanding of soil physical and chemical factors on forest growth, dynamics and carbon balance. An early paper utilising this data showed that after accounting for soil fertility Asian forests were considerably more productive (in terms of aboveground wood production) than Amazonian forests (Banin et al. 2014).

The Anthropocene

I have been developing a new research program on the Anthropocene, the idea that human activity has altered the Earth System so dramatically they we are now the major driver of change in the Earth System today, and so we have entered a new geological epoch, termed the time of humans, the Anthropocene.

Databases

Impact

My research includes major contributions to networks of long-term tropical forest inventory plots, which now constitute a pan-tropical on-the-ground observatory of tropical forests. This is an international networks of scientists (from >50 institutions, >250 participants and >30 nations) using standardised methods developed, honed and propagated across the tropics. This enables, for the first time, the use of on-the-ground observations to make a direct evaluation of the role of tropical forests in the global carbon cycle and to assess their sensitivity to climate change (Lewis et al. 2009; Nature; Phillips et al. 2009, Science; Lewis et al. 2011, Science; Pan et al. 2011 Science). As well as having a major impact on international debates on the future trajectory of climate change and appropriate policy responses, this work is influencing national-scale efforts across the tropics to monitor forests in the face of climate change and to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation. Various research impacts are summarised below.

African Tropical Rainforest Observatory Network (AfriTRON)

Dr Lewis founded and co-manages a network of long-term inventory plots across 12 countries in tropical Africa (Lewis et al. 2013, Phil. Trans B.). This network has contributed to forest management in Gabon, for which Dr Lewis was a technical advisor to the government of Gabon, at the UN climate change talks in 2009 (Copenhagen), 2010 (Cancun), and contributed data to Le Plan Climate National [The National Climate Plan] of Gabon. Additionally, Lewis acted as a technical advisor to the government of Gabon at the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) to discuss how carbon storage and carbon fluxes in the Congo Basin should be monitored. Currently, Lewis alongside John Poulsen (Duke University) and Sassan Saatchi (NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, UCLA) is assisting the government of Gabon in a national forest monitoring program. Dr Lewis was also an external consultant for the Centre for International Forestry planning phase of the pan-tropical USD100 million ‘Sentinal Landscapes’ program. 

Forestplots.net

This is a global repository for long-term forest inventory data, co-founded with Prof Oliver Phillips, Dr Tim Baker and Dr Gabriela Lopez-Gonzalez (all University of Leeds). Extracted data has been used in >50 publications, resulting in >1000 articles across print, TV and radio worldwide. Contained within the foresplots.net database is the global wood density database, co-created by Lewis (led by Amy Zanne, George Washington University), itself the most downloaded dataset on the datadryad repository. 

GEOCARBON

This is a project to develop a global carbon observing and analysis system to integrate in situ (ground monitoring) measurements, with atmospheric measurements and models to monitor the emissions of carbon from human activity, with the stores and fluxes of carbon in the atmosphere and across the world’s land surface and oceans to give a comprehensive understanding of the global carbon cycle and how humans have perturbed it. The AfriTRON plot network contributes to GEOCARBON. This EU-funded €8.8million project is a precursor to an operational global monitoring system. 

Public policy

While it is the job of society generally to determine policy positions, politicians to formally define agreed rules, and citizens and the judiciary to hold politicians to account, scientists can contribute to societal debates via timely information to assist the public in their decisions. Dr Lewis has contributed to this, for example, back in 2005 the UK government distributed a paper of his on tropical forests and avoiding dangerous climate change to other countries at the UN climate talks in Montreal (published as Lewis et al. 2006, in Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, Edited by Schellnhuber et al.). In 2009, Dr Lewis contributed to drafting the InterAcademies Panel (the global network of science academies) on tropical forests and climate change. More recently he published a short piece in response to the UN Rio+20 conference on some of the difficulties of deciding on and implementing planetary boundaries (Lewis 2012 ). Dr Lewis also spent a week in the European Parliament shadowing an MEP (Linda McAvan) to learn about how policy-makers do their work. Dr Lewis serves on the Conservation Committee of the Association for Tropical Biodiversity and Conservation, the world’s largest scientific society focusing on tropical biodiversity. The committee releases timely reports to assist choices when specific policies, projects or activities may negatively impact biodiversity and the people who directly rely on it.

Media: Dr Lewis is regularly asked for comment on climate change, tropical forests, and scientific research more generally. His research and opinions have been reported by The Australian, BBC Radio 4 Today program, BBC 1- O’Clock News, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat, BBC 5 Live, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, The Ecologist, Financial Times, Guardian, New Scientist, New York Times, Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), Red Pepper, The Telegraph, The Times and other newspapers worldwide. For example, see this article by The Economist. Lewis has also fought shoddy reporting standards in the past. Lewis also occasionally contributes commentary pieces for The Guardian.

Public lectures

Dr Lewis has given lectures at as diverse locations as the Natural History Museum, as part of the Sebastião Salgado ‘Genesis’ exhibition (2013 on Science and exploration), the British Film Institute (2010, on Gaia theory), the ‘Reclaim the Power’ anti-fracking protest camp at Balcombe (2013, basics of climate change science), and in front of hundreds of riot police at the Camp for Climate Action protest outside the European Carbon Exchange (2009, basics of climate change science).

Dr Lewis was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2011 in recognition of the international impact of his research.

Selected commentary and news coverage

  • Psy.org (2012) Biodiversity proects tropical rainforest from drought, 30 August. Reports on impacts of drought on African tropical forests.
  • Lewis S.L. (2012). We must set planetary boundaries wisely. Nature, 485, 417-417.
  • Metro (2012). Stopping the sands of time, 19 Jan. SL comment on plan to plant forests in Africa
  • BBC News website (2012) Africa's rainforests 'more resilient' to climate change, 6 Jan. SL Comment
  • Telegraph (2012). Climategate 2? More UEA hacked emails, 23 November. SL Comment
  • Lewis, S. L. (2011) Lack of agreement on climate change helps no one, Guardian, 23 November. Letter
  • BBC News website (2011) 'No substitute' for virgin forest, including SL comment about land-sparing to protect biodiversity, 15 September.
  • Telegraph (2011) 'World's forests absorb almost 40 per cent of man-made CO2.' Report Pan et al. Science paper), 18 August 2011
  • Lewis, S. L. (2011) Climate change for media diversity, Guardian, 13 July. Letter
  • Independent (2011) China’s power stations generate ‘future spike’ in global warming. SL comment on relative roles or aerosols & CO2, 5 July.
  • Ecologist Magazine (2011) Long interview on recent Amazon droughts, 27 May 2011
  • Economist (2011) Welcome to the Anthropocene 26 May 2011. SL comment.
  • BBC Today Program (2011). Live interview on slowing deforestation without increasing rural poverty, May 30.
  • Ecoamericas Magasine (2011), long interview on Amazon drought, April 2011
  • Alliaz Insurance (2011), interview for Allianz.com website, 18 March.
  • National Public Radio (2011) Report on Amazon 2010 drought, 7 February 2011.
  • BBC 10 O’clock News, 3 Feb 2011, report on Lewis et al. Amazon 2010 drought paper
  • SkyNews (2011) CO2 fears after Amazon rainforest drought 3 Feb 2011, report on Lewis et al. Amazon 2010 drought paper
  • The Independent (2011) P1 main story plus editorial, on Lewis et al. Amazon 2010 drought paper, 4 February.
  • The Guardian (2011) P23, full page on Lewis et al. Amazon 2010 drought paper, 4 February.
  • The Sun (2011) P11, Short piece on Lewis et al. Amazon 2010 drought paper, 4 February.
  • BBC Radio 5 live. SL on afternoon drive-time radio, interview on Amazon drought, 3 February
  • Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio 1. SL interview on Amazon drought, 3 February.
  • Economist (2010) Seeing the world for the trees. 16 December. SL Comment
  • Lewis S.L. (2010). How to beat the media in the climate street fight. Nature, 468, 7-7.
  • George Monbiot (2010) Sunday Times admits ‘Amazongate’ story was rubbish. But who’s to blame. 24 June. About SL.
  • Roy Greenslade (2010) Sunday Times ‘correction’ was a giant climbdown, 21 June. About SL.
  • New York Times (2010) British newspaper apologies to climate scientist. 20 June. About SL, SL comment.
  • Sunday Times (2010). Retraction of article citing Lewis. P2, 20 June. About SL.
  • Lewis S. L. (2010). How fear of bias dominates the climate change debate. The Guardian, 10 October.
  • Lewis S. L. (2010). Yes we can change society before global crises overwhelm us. The Guardian, 14 March.
  • New York Times (2010). P1, report including SL comments on mis-reporting in the UK press on climate change.
  • Guardian (2010) Forests expert officially complains about ‘distorted’ Sunday Times article, 24 March.
  • Radio 4 Today (2010), SL commenting about an alleged Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistake relating to the vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to climate change-induced drought. 30 Jan.
  • Sunday Times (2010), report the opposite of my views on the IPCC and Amazon rainforest vulnerability to climate change induced droughts, 31 January.
  • The Times (2009), SL comment about oil palm plantations and destruction of tropical forests in Asia, 11 December.
  • Lewis S.L. (2009) Copenhagen: time to stop the finger-pointing, Guardian, 28 December, letter.
  • Lewis S.L. (2009). A force of Nature: our influential Anthropocene period. Guardian, 24 July.
  • Lewis S.L. (2009). Scientists on the streets. Guardian, 10 March.
  • Lewis S.L. (2009). Will clean coal clean up our climate? Guardian, 27 April 2009, letter.
  • Sunday Times (2009) Plants buy Earth more time as CO2 makes them grow faster. 5 April.
  • Guardian (2009) Climate change transforming rainforest into major carbon emitters, warn scientists, 11 March.
  • Guardian (2009) Firth of world carbon emissions soaked up by extra forest growth, 18 February. Report on Lewis et al. 2009 African tropical forest carbon sink paper in Nature.
  • Guardian (2009) Folly and foibles of the Heathrow decision., 19, January. Letter.
  • Lewis S.L. (2008). A dangerous untruth. Guardian, 1 August.
  • Lewis S.L. (2008). It’s time for a body count. Guardian, 26 February.
  • Reuters (2007). Scientists warn on biofuel as palm oil price jumps, 31 May. SL comment
Research Students
  • Charlotte Wheeler. Funded by a NERC CASE studentship. Project title, ‘Designing tropical forests of the future.’
  • Andy Burt. Funded by a NERC CASE studentship. Quantifying forest state and degradation: exploiting new measurements and models. 2nd supervisor.
  • Shinta Puspitasari. Ecological Resilience of Beetle Diversity in Tropical Islands. 2nd supervisor.

Plus three PhD students in Leeds.

Simon Lewis

Role

Professor of Global Change Science

Contact

UCL Department of Geography,
North West Wing,
London,
WC1E 6BT

Websites

Academic Staff