Rob Marchant
Professor

Profile

Biography

My research and teaching interests focus on ecosystems and how they change. In particular, I use palaeoecology, vegetation modelling, archaeological, biogeographical and ecological data to determine the role of past events in shaping the present day composition and distribution of tropical ecosystems. My interest in tropical environments was sparked by a Royal Geographical Society-sponsored expedition to study seagrass and coral ecosystems off Zanzibar. In my PhD research I produced a 50,000-year record of forest history from Bwindi-Impenetrable Forest, Uganda to understand forcing mechanisms (climatic, human and ecological) responsible for sedimentary and vegetation change. From this I moved to the University of Amsterdam to focus on Latin American ecosystems through the Biome 6000 project. In 2003 I took a Marie-Curie research fellowship in the School of Botany, Trinity College, Dublin where I have been developing and using a pollen database for Ireland. My main research area remains in tropical environments, and I am currently working on projects in Cameroon, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Thailand and Uganda. My research is funded by research councils (e.g. UK’s National Environmental Research Council, The Netherlands Foundation); the European Union; and national governments (e.g. United Kingdom and The Netherlands) and NGOs (e.g. WWF). In addition to understanding past ecosystem transitions, much of our work is focused on applying this knowledge on ecosystem dynamics to contemporary challenges around climate change, development and social economic change. By using insights from the past we can manage the future better and achieve the various sustainable development agendas - internationally, nationally and locally. 

Career

Research

Overview

My main interest is researching processes of environmental change and how these are registered by tropical vegetation, how this may respond in a future of uncertain change and how we can use such information to guide appropriate policy development. My research covers the fields of biogeography, ecology, palaeoecology and ecosystem modelling. Combining these disciplines I develop an understanding, at an ecologically sensible timeframe, of the events that have shaped the past, present and future composition and distribution of tropical ecosystems.

There are three main geographical areas where I have active research programmes – East Africa, Latin America and Ireland. Although these three areas are quite different, there are interesting linkages between them; particularly through the Atlantic Ocean and associated climate interactions and feedbacks to the terrestrial ecosystems. Indeed, as many of the climatic dynamics that have impacted on tropical ecosystems have a global signal understanding the phase relationships of how ecosystems respond to these large scale processes is vital for a considered insight into understanding the spatial pattern and associated impacts of future climate change.

I co-ordinate the York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem (KITE), a Marie-Curie funded Excellence Centre, that explores the relationship between ecosystem dynamics, climate change, and human impacts in Africa. The key elements of the proposal are to:

• Determine ecosystem response to climate change by focusing on an area of particularly high biodiversity
• Determine the role of human impacts on present forest composition and long-term ecosystem functioning
• Determine pollen-vegetation relationships and develop methods to link site-scale fossil data to landscape
• Develop and test models to link past, present and future ecosystem functioning at different spatial scales
• Produce results to inform management and policy formation both in the study area and more generically

Research group(s)

York Institute for Tropical Ecosystems (KITE)

External activities

Overview

Partnerships

External to the University of York I am a member of the Scientific Leadership Council for the Mountain Research Initiative (https://www.mountainresearchinitiative.org/ ) - this multidisciplinary scientific organisation addresses global change issues in mountain regions around the world through concerted efforts, diverse communication formats and various networking events. I am a member of the International Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Scenario group and lead for the Africa Group on the Past Global Changes.  My external partnerships aim to enhance the opportunities, build research collaborations, and identify sustainable and equitable solutions to critical local, regional and global challenges of relevance to a number of African countries. We work closely with multiple institutions - foremost are the National Museums of Kenya, the Africa Conservation Centre, WWF-Tanzania, UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and the Universities of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Nelson Mandela (Arusha), Sokoine and Ghana at Legon. Through these collaborative research partnerships we aim to support sustainable development through providing the evidence-base for innovations and impacts in both the natural and social sciences to support Africa’s development agenda, as outlined in the African Union’s Agenda 2063, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Capacity strengthening and training

I am a passionate advocate for supporting International scholarship, the World Universities Network and encourage academic involvement in developing strong, multi-layered international partnerships.  I have taught on a series of residential summer schools funded through the McArthur Foundation, The National Museums of Kenya, The University of Dar es Salaam, The Tropical Biological Association, The University of Suriname and NSF-START.  These initiatives have exposed several hundred students from across the Global South to high quality teaching on managing the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and resulted in an extensive Alumnus, many of whom I maintain continued collaborative links. I am driven by making research findings useful to society, disseminating results to wider audiences (from local communities to policy makers) and in science outreach, believing ‘science should be beneficial to people’, particularly as this is publicly funded I fully believe there should be ‘Common good’ for my work.  I have supervised 36 PhD (17 from the African continent) and 15 Postdoctoral researchers.