Colin Prentice | |
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 Colin Prentice at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2018 | |
| Born | Iain Colin Prentice 25 June 1952 [1] |
| Education | University of Cambridge (BA, PhD) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Studies on modern pollen spectra |
| Website | imperial |
(Iain) Colin Prentice FRS (born 25 June 1952) [1] [3] holds the AXA chair in biosphere and climate impacts at Imperial College London and an honorary chair in ecology and evolution at Macquarie University in Australia. [2] [4]
Prentice was educated at the University of Cambridge where he studied the natural sciences tripos and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1973 [4] followed by a PhD in botany in 1977 for studies on pollen spectra. [5]
Prentice has held academic and research leadership appointments in several countries, including the chair of plant ecology at Lund University and a founding directorship of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. [3] He led the research programme quantifying and understanding the earth system for the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). [3] He developed the standard model for pollen source area, popularized now widely used techniques to analyse species composition along environmental gradients, and led the international development of successive generations of large-scale ecosystem models – from equilibrium biogeography (BIOME) to coupled biogeochemistry and vegetation dynamics (LPJ). [3] As of 2018 [update] his research applies eco-evolutionary optimality concepts to develop and test new quantitative theory for plant and ecosystem function and land-atmosphere exchanges of energy, water and carbon dioxide, with the goal of more robust and reliable numerical modelling of land processes in the earth system science. [3] [6] [7]
Ecology is the study of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history. Ecology is a branch of biology, and it is not synonymous with environmentalism.
Biogeochemistry is the scientific discipline that involves the study of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment. In particular, biogeochemistry is the study of biogeochemical cycles, the cycles of chemical elements such as carbon and nitrogen, and their interactions with and incorporation into living things transported through earth scale biological systems in space and time. The field focuses on chemical cycles which are either driven by or influence biological activity. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, iron, and phosphorus cycles. Biogeochemistry is a systems science closely related to systems ecology.
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Anthony Ronald Entrican Sinclair is a professor emeritus of zoology at the University of British Columbia.
Suzanne Mary Prober is an Australian botanist and ecologist.
Yadvinder Singh Malhi is professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford and a Jackson Senior Research Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford.
Pete Smith is Professor of Soils and Global change at the University of Aberdeen where he directs the Scottish Climate Change Centre of Expertise, ClimateXChange.
Philippe Ciais is a researcher of the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE), the climate change research unit of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL). He is a physicist working on the global carbon cycle of planet Earth, climate change, ecology and geosciences.
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