My research is on quantifying and understanding the terrestrial carbon cycle and its links to global change. I study the interactions of plant and soil processes across environmental and biodiversity gradients from the tropics to the Arctic. I use process based modelling and data assimilation methods to extract information from detailed ecosystem measurements on feedback processes between soil, vegetation and the atmosphere, over timescales from days to years. Linking to remote sensing data, I use models to upscale process information to investigate landscape processes. I focus particularly on issues relating to the drought sensitivity of forests, the role of disturbance (fire or anthropogenic) on forest biomass, and the sensitivity of Arctic ecosystems to warming. Understanding and simulating the non-steady state behaviour of ecosystems is a current focal interest. Teaching: I am course organiser for Ecological Measurement, a 3rd year undegraduate field course based in the Scottish Highlands. I also teach on the MSc course Ecosystem Function and Dynamics. I was a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, from August 2012 - June 2013. In 2014 I received a Royal Society-Wolfson Merit Award, to support my research into "Tracing sources and sinks in the terrestrial carbon cycle under global change". You can watch my inaugural lecture, April 2012, entitled "Seeing the forest for the trees, a journey from Plant to Planet" here. You can listen to a podcast by myself and Shaun Quegan, from NERC's Planet Earth, entitled "Space Mission to measure biomass" here.