Rate My Professor Simon Lewis

Professor Simon Lewis is Professor of Global Change Science in the School of Geography, Faculty of Environment, University of Leeds, and holds the position of Chair of Global Change Science at University College London. He earned a BSc with first class honours in Ecology from the University of Leeds between 1990 and 1993, followed by a PhD in Tropical Forest Ecology from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 1998. His doctoral thesis, titled 'Treefall gaps and regeneration: a comparison of continuous and fragmented forest in central Amazonia,' was conducted jointly with the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project in Brazil. Lewis's research career at the University of Leeds began with NERC-funded Research Fellowships from 2000 to 2003, focusing on changing tropical forest dynamics and evaluating physical, chemical, and biological drivers in collaboration with colleagues. He subsequently held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship from 2004 to 2013.

Lewis specializes in global change ecology, investigating the impacts and interactions of multiple anthropogenic global change phenomena on tropical forests, with a particular emphasis on African tropical forests. He founded and co-manages the African Tropical Rainforest Observation Network (AfriTRON), comprising long-term monitoring sites across 12 countries in tropical Africa, and serves as principal investigator on the CongoPeat project, which examines the past, present, and future of the peatlands in the Central Congo Basin. His influential research has demonstrated that intact tropical forests have absorbed significant quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby slowing climate change, although this carbon sink capacity is now in decline. Additionally, he led efforts to describe and map the central Congo peatlands, spanning 16.8 million hectares, revealing their threshold behavior as either carbon sinks or sources depending on wetter or drier conditions. Lewis was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023. He has delivered public lectures, including on 'Tropical forests and atmospheric carbon dioxide: current knowledge and potential future scenarios' at the DEFRA 'Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change' international symposium, and co-authored the book The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene with Mark Maslin in 2018. His work informs global climate policy, carbon storage strategies, and biodiversity conservation.