Rob Marchant

I am a Professor of Tropical Ecology in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York where I lead The York Institute of Ecosystem Dynamics (KITE: https://www.york.ac.uk/environment/research/kite/). KITE is now recognised as one of the leading groups internationally in the area of understanding ecosystem change and managing the impacts of environmental change in East Africa. The KITE group has developed methods across a range of traditional scientific disciplines to understand ecosystem response to climate change and human interaction in the past, at the present and into the future. With this multi- and intra-disciplinary approach I have published in more than 180 book chapters and research papers; the majority of these publications appear in high impact environmental science journals. Research into impacts of climate change on ecosystem functioning is increasingly applied, particularly in the area of ecosystem services, livelihoods and resilience of natural systems to climate change. Research output from the KITE group are being used by a combination within government institutions and conservation NGOs to address socio-economic issues concerning long-term ecosystem management, in particular on ecosystem services of East Africa. All KITE research has been conducted in close collaboration with institutions in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda; I have supervised 35 PhD students (15 from East African countries), 12 Post-Doctoral research fellows, and run a series of training courses across East African Universities around Climate Change, Geospatial and numerical analysis.