Professor David Edwards

College positions: Senior Research Fellow

University position: Professor of Plant Ecology (2000); Director, Centre for Global Wood Security

Subject: Ecology and Conservation Science

Professor Edwards is a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene.

Professor Edwards holds the Professorship of Plant Ecology (2000) and is the founding Director of the Centre for Global Wood Security at the University of Cambridge. His research primarily focuses on understanding the responses of forest biodiversity and ecosystem services to global change, including selective logging, conversion to farmland, and restoration.

His research combines intensive field study, with remote sensing, global mapping, and land-use modelling, to tackle key questions in forest ecology, management, and conservation, with a focus on issues of global policy significance. He has worked extensively across tropical forest ecosystems, including the Andes, Amazon, West Africa, southern African miombo, and insular South-east Asia, but also take a fully global-scale perspective in identifying threats to forestry.

He is particularly interested in understanding the most effective ways of managing timber production and restoration to enhance biodiversity protection and the sustainable delivery of associated ecosystem functions and services. His recent work has revealed the threats posed to global timber supply from wildfire and competition with farming under climate change; that traditional assessments of the biodiversity impacts of land-use change have substantially underestimated the severity of loss; and the potential for restoration to offer cost-effective recovery of tropical biodiversity and carbon stocks.

Prof Edwards studied mutualism and cheating in an Amazonian ant-plant interaction for his PhD at the University of East Anglia. In response to the global change pressures on tropical forests and biodiversity, he expanded his work to tackle major issues such as selective logging and restoration, working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Leeds, Princeton University, and James Cook University. In 2013, he was appointed Lecturer in Conservation Science at the University of Sheffield, rising to Professor in 2018, before moving to Cambridge in 2023.

Research Interests

  • Tropical forest ecology
  • Biodiversity conservation
  • Forestry
  • Restoration
  • Wildlife trade

Qualifications

  • PhD in Tropical Ecology, University of East Anglia
  • BSc in Ecology, University of East Anglia

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Global risk of wildfire across timber production systems. Bousfield CG, Morton O, Lindenmayer DB, Pellegrini AFA, Hethcoat MG, Edwards DP. Nature Communications 16 (2025): 4204.

Evolutionarily distinct species are threatened by international trade. Meeks D, Morton O, Edwards DP. Current Biology 35 (2025): 2848–2857.

Tropical biodiversity loss from land use change is severely underestimated by local scale assessments. Socolar JB et al. Nature Ecology and Evolution 9 (2025): 1643–1655.

Climate change will exacerbate land conflict between agriculture and timber production. Bousfield CG, Morton O, Edwards DP. Nature Climate Change 14 (2024): 1071–1077.

Novel temperatures are already widespread beneath the world’s tropical forest canopies. Trew BT et al. Nature Climate Change 14 (2024): 753–759.

Substantial and increasing global losses of timber producing forest due to wildfires. Bousfield CG, Lindenmayer DB, Edwards DP. Nature Geosciences 16 (2023): 1145–1150.

Global hotspots of traded phylogenetic and functional diversity. Hughes LJ et al. Nature 620 (2023): 351–357.

Reduced deforestation and degradation in Indigenous Lands pan tropically. Sze JS, Carrasco LR, Childs DZ, Edwards DP. Nature Sustainability 5 (2022): 123–130.

Mainstreaming tropical restoration to deliver environmental benefits and socially equitable outcomes. Edwards DP et al. Current Biology 31 (2021): R1326–R1341.

Impacts of wildlife trade on terrestrial biodiversity. Morton O, Scheffers BR, Haugaasen T, Edwards DP. Nature Ecology and Evolution 5 (2021): 540–548.

Conservation of tropical forests in the Anthropocene. Edwards DP et al. Current Biology 29 (2019): R1008–R1020.

Global wildlife trade across the tree of life. Scheffers BR, Oliveira B, Lamb I, Edwards DP. Science 366 (2019): 71–76.

Global loss of climate connectivity in tropical forests. Senior RA, Hill JK, Edwards DP. Nature Climate Change 9 (2019): 623–626.

How should beta diversity inform biodiversity conservation?. Socolar JB, Gilroy JJ, Kunin WE, Edwards DP. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 31 (2016): 67–80.

Email
dpe29@cam.ac.uk