A boardwalk through mangrove forest, Koh Chang, Thailand. I combine large-scale Earth observation with rigorous causal methods, so a claim about a forest, a carbon project, or a policy can be tested against what would have happened otherwise.
Forests recover from stress, until they can't.
Ecosystems respond to environmental stress nonlinearly. As warming, drought, and fire compound, a forest's capacity to recover erodes until a critical threshold, beyond which it shifts abruptly, and often irreversibly, to a degraded state. Grounded in dynamical systems theory, my research integrates satellite Earth observation, Earth-system modelling, and forest inventories to estimate recovery rates, detect the critical slowing down that precedes a transition, and map where tipping risk is concentrating across the tropics.
The Congo River and the rainforest along it.Helping people and ecosystems at once, and seeing who pays.
Human and ecological systems are inseparable in landscapes that must store carbon, sustain biodiversity, produce food, secure water, and support livelihoods at once. These functions rarely align, and gains in one can mean losses in another, or accrue to some groups while costs fall on others. My research studies rural and urban landscapes as socio-ecological systems, combining causal inference with remote sensing to locate where nature-based solutions such as agroforestry and urban greening yield genuine co-benefits, and to clarify how those benefits and burdens are distributed.
Working in the rice fields in northern Vietnam.Carbon markets make promises. Can the evidence support them?
Limiting warming requires cutting emissions even as the warming already locked in demands adaptation. Both are increasingly mobilised through policy instruments and market mechanisms: carbon crediting, conservation finance, and an emerging architecture of supply-chain regulation. Their credibility hinges on conditions readily asserted yet hard to substantiate: additionality, leakage, permanence, and defensible baselines. My research subjects these claims to empirical scrutiny, drawing on causal inference, counterfactual evaluation, and remote sensing to establish which instruments deliver genuine and durable outcomes, from forest carbon and offsets to commodity supply chains.
Cleared ground meeting oil palm plantation, Johor, Malaysia.
Smallholder cultivation among forested hills, Moc Chau, Vietnam.Quantifies the contribution of agroforestry in reducing deforestation in Southeast Asia's most carbon-rich forests.
Rainforest along a river, near Iquitos, Peru.A framework for crediting jurisdictions that have kept their forests standing, rather than only those reversing loss.
Emission baseline uncertainty, mapped worldwide.Quantifies how baseline choices swing credited carbon volumes, with direct consequences for market integrity.
A forested catchment feeding the Mekong River, northeast Thailand.Maps where reforestation eases water stress rather than worsening it across the Asia-Pacific.
A green corridor and canal with the skyline behind, Bishan Park, Singapore.Estimates the global climate mitigation potential of reforesting the world's cities.
Highway cutting through forest and oil palm, Johor, Malaysia.An early review of how the Belt and Road Initiative may reshape environmental footprints.
“I'm grateful to my collaborators for the diverse contexts and perspectives they bring, which have greatly enriched our science.”