The Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystems Analysis (www) was founded in 2002 and forms part of a new interdisciplinary research centre for earth system and climate impacts research, the Geobiosphere Science Centre (CGB). The department and centre have a strong international profile in studies of the impacts of changing climate, atmospheric composition and land use on terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity, and of the feed-back mechanisms linking ecosystem structure and function to the atmosphere.

Martin Sykes is an experimental and theoretical ecologist with broad interests in plant ecology focused on understanding responses of vegetation and biodiversity to climate change. He has pioneered the application of stand-scale and global dynamic vegetation models for climate impacts studies.

Benjamin Smith is an ecologist and ecological modeller whose research strives for an improved understanding of the processes governing terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and climate interactions.