Yadvinder Malhi

University of Oxford

H-index: 143

Europe-United Kingdom

Description

Yadvinder Malhi, With an exceptional h-index of 143 and a recent h-index of 106 (since 2020), a distinguished researcher at University of Oxford, specializes in the field of Ecosystem ecology, tropical forests, climate change.

His recent articles reflect a diverse array of research interests and contributions to the field:

Consistent climatic controls of global wood density among angiosperms and gymnosperms

More than 17,000 tree species are at risk from rapid global change

One sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is dependent on river floodplains

Landscape and management influences on smallholder agroforestry yields show shifts during a climate shock

Contrasting nutrient strategies and thresholds in tropical forests revealed by whole ecosystem nutrient flux

Tree Surface Area Allometry

Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities

Large invertebrate decomposers contribute to faster leaf litter decomposition in Fraxinus excelsior-dominated habitats: Implications of ash dieback

Professor Information

University	University of Oxford
Position	Professor of Ecosystem Science
Citations(all)	84013
Citations(since 2020)	40789
Cited By	58717
hIndex(all)	143
hIndex(since 2020)	106
i10Index(all)	479
i10Index(since 2020)	440
Email	Access Email
University Profile Page	University of Oxford

Research & Interests List

Ecosystem ecology

tropical forests

climate change

Top articles of Yadvinder Malhi

Consistent climatic controls of global wood density among angiosperms and gymnosperms

The density of wood is a key indicator of trees’ carbon investment strategies, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here, we analyze information from 1.1 million forest inventory plots alongside wood density data from 10,703 tree species to create a spatially-explicit understanding of the global wood density distribution and its drivers. Our findings reveal a pronounced latitudinal gradient, with wood in tropical dry forests being up to twice as dense as that in boreal forests. In both angiosperms and gymnosperms, temperature and water availability emerged as the primary factors influencing the variation in wood density globally. This indicates similar environmental filters and evolutionary adaptations among distinct plant groups, underscoring the essential role of abiotic factors in determining wood density in forest ecosystems. Additionally, our study highlights the prominent role of disturbance, such as human modification and fire risk, in influencing wood density at more local scales. Factoring in the spatial variation of wood density notably changes the estimates of forest carbon stocks, leading to differences of up to 21% within biomes. Therefore, our research contributes to a deeper understanding of terrestrial biomass distribution and how environmental changes and disturbances impact forest ecosystems.

Authors

Lidong Mo,Thomas Crowther,Daniel Maynard,Johan van den Hoogen,Haozhi Ma,Lalasia Bialic-Murphy,Susanne Renner,Jingjing Liang,Sergio de-Miguel,Gert-Jan Nabuurs,Peter B Reich,Oliver Phillips,Meinrad Abegg,C Yves Adou Yao,Giorgio Alberti,Angélica Almeyda Zambrano,Braulio Alvarado,Esteban Alvarez-Davila,Patricia Alvarez-Loayza,Luciana Alves,Ieda Leao do Amaral,Christian Ammer,Clara Antón-Fernández,Alejandro Araujo-Murakami,Luzmila Arroyo,Valerio Avitabile,Timothy Baker,Radomir Balazy,Olaf Banki,Jorcely Barroso,Meredith Bastian,Jean-Francois Bastin,Luca Birigazzi,Philippe Birnbaum,Robert Bitariho,Pascal Boeckx,Frans Bongers,Coline Boonman,Olivier Bouriaud,Pedro Brancalion,Susanne Brandl,Francis Brearley,Roel Brienen,Eben Broadbent,Helge Bruelheide,Filippo Bussotti,Roberto Cazzolla Gatti,Ricardo César,Goran Cesljar,Robin Chazdon,Han Chen,Chelsea Chisholm,Hyunkook Cho,Emil Cienciala,Connie Clark,David Clark,Gabriel Colletta,David Coomes,Fernando Cornejo Valverde,Jose Corral-Rivas,Philip Crim,Jonathan Cumming,Selvadurai Dayanandan,André de Gasper,Mathieu Decuyper,Géraldine Derroire,Ben DeVries,Ilija Djordjevic,Jiri Dolezal,Aurélie Dourdain,Nestor Laurier Engone Obiang,Brian Enquist,Teresa Eyre,Adandé Fandohan,Tom Fayle,Ted Feldpausch,Leandro Ferreira,Leena Finér,Markus Fischer,Christine Fletcher,Lorenzo Frizzera,Javier Gamarra,Damiano Gianelle,Henry Glick,David Harris,Andrew Hector,Andreas Hemp,Geerten Hengeveld,Bruno Herault,John Herbohn,Martin Herold,Peter Hietz,Annika Hillers,Eurídice Honorio Coronado,Cang Hui,Thomas Ibanez,Nobuo Imai,Andrzej Jagodzinski,Bogdan Jaroszewicz,Vivian Johannsen,Carlos Joly,Tommaso Jucker,Ilbin Jung,Viktor Karminov,Kuswata Kartawinata,Elizabeth Kearsley,David Kenfack,Deborah Kennard,Sebastian Kepfer Rojas,Gunnar Keppel,Mohammed Khan,Timothy Killeen,Hyun Seok Kim,Kanehiro Kitayama,Michael Köhl,Henn Korjus,Florian Kraxner,Dmitry Kucher,Diana Laarmann,Mait Lang,Simon Lewis,Yuanzhi Li,Gabriela Lopez-Gonzalez,Huicui Lu,Natalia Lukina,Brian Maitner,Yadvinder Malhi,Eric Marcon,Beatriz Marimon,Ben Hur Marimon-Junior,Andrew Marshall,Emanuel Martin,James McCarthy,Jorge Meave,Omar Melo-Cruz,Casimiro Mendoza,Irina Mendoza Polo,Stanislaw Miscicki,Cory Merow,Abel Monteagudo Mendoza,Vanessa de Souza Moreno,Sharif Mukul,Philip Mundhenk,María Guadalupe Nava-Miranda,David Neill,Victor Neldner,Radovan Nevenic,Pascal Niklaus,Petr Ontikov,Edgar Ortiz-Malavasi

Published Date

2024/2/22

More than 17,000 tree species are at risk from rapid global change

Trees are pivotal to global biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people, yet accelerating global changes threaten global tree diversity, making accurate species extinction risk assessments necessary. To identify species that require expert-based re-evaluation, we assess exposure to change in six anthropogenic threats over the last two decades for 32,090 tree species. We estimated that over half (54.2%) of the assessed species have been exposed to increasing threats. Only 8.7% of these species are considered threatened by the IUCN Red List, whereas they include more than half of the Data Deficient species (57.8%). These findings suggest a substantial underestimation of threats and associated extinction risk for tree species in current assessments. We also map hotspots of tree species exposed to rapidly changing threats around the world. Our data-driven approach can strengthen the efforts going into …

Authors

Coline CF Boonman,Josep M Serra-Diaz,Selwyn Hoeks,Wen-Yong Guo,Brian J Enquist,Brian Maitner,Yadvinder Malhi,Cory Merow,Robert Buitenwerf,Jens-Christian Svenning

Journal

Nature Communications

Published Date

2024/1/2

One sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is dependent on river floodplains

Amazonia’s floodplain system is the largest and most biodiverse on Earth. Although forests are crucial to the ecological integrity of floodplains, our understanding of their species composition and how this may differ from surrounding forest types is still far too limited, particularly as changing inundation regimes begin to reshape floodplain tree communities and the critical ecosystem functions they underpin. Here we address this gap by taking a spatially explicit look at Amazonia-wide patterns of tree-species turnover and ecological specialization of the region’s floodplain forests. We show that the majority of Amazonian tree species can inhabit floodplains, and about a sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is ecologically specialized on floodplains. The degree of specialization in floodplain communities is driven by regional flood patterns, with the most compositionally differentiated floodplain forests located centrally within …

Authors

John Ethan Householder,Florian Wittmann,Jochen Schöngart,Maria Teresa Fernandez Piedade,Wolfgang J Junk,Edgardo Manuel Latrubesse,Adriano Costa Quaresma,Layon O Demarchi,Guilherme de S. Lobo,Daniel PP de Aguiar,Rafael L Assis,Aline Lopes,Pia Parolin,Iêda Leão do Amaral,Luiz de Souza Coelho,Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos,Diógenes de Andrade Lima Filho,Rafael P Salomão,Carolina V Castilho,Juan Ernesto Guevara-Andino,Marcelo de Jesus Veiga Carim,Oliver L Phillips,Dairon Cárdenas López,William E Magnusson,Daniel Sabatier,Juan David Cardenas Revilla,Jean-François Molino,Mariana Victória Irume,Maria Pires Martins,José Renan da Silva Guimarães,José Ferreira Ramos,Domingos de Jesus Rodrigues,Olaf S Bánki,Carlos A Peres,Nigel CA Pitman,Joseph E Hawes,Everton José Almeida,Luciane Ferreira Barbosa,Larissa Cavalheiro,Márcia Cléia Vilela Dos Santos,Bruno Garcia Luize,Evlyn Márcia Moraes de Leão Novo,Percy Núñez Vargas,Thiago Sanna Freire Silva,Eduardo Martins Venticinque,Angelo Gilberto Manzatto,Neidiane Farias Costa Reis,John Terborgh,Katia Regina Casula,Flávia RC Costa,Euridice N Honorio Coronado,Abel Monteagudo Mendoza,Juan Carlos Montero,Ted R Feldpausch,Gerardo A Aymard C,Chris Baraloto,Nicolás Castaño Arboleda,Julien Engel,Pascal Petronelli,Charles Eugene Zartman,Timothy J Killeen,Lorena Maniguaje Rincón,Beatriz S Marimon,Ben Hur Marimon-Junior,Juliana Schietti,Thaiane R Sousa,Rodolfo Vasquez,Bonifacio Mostacedo,Dário Dantas do Amaral,Hernán Castellanos,Marcelo Brilhante de Medeiros,Marcelo Fragomeni Simon,Ana Andrade,José Luís Camargo,William F Laurance,Susan GW Laurance,Emanuelle de Sousa Farias,Maria Aparecida Lopes,José Leonardo Lima Magalhães,Henrique Eduardo Mendonça Nascimento,Helder Lima de Queiroz,Roel Brienen,Pablo R Stevenson,Alejandro Araujo-Murakami,Tim R Baker,Bruno Barçante Ladvocat Cintra,Yuri Oliveira Feitosa,Hugo F Mogollón,Janaína Costa Noronha,Flávia Rodrigues Barbosa,Rainiellen de Sá Carpanedo,Joost F Duivenvoorden,Miles R Silman,Leandro Valle Ferreira,Carolina Levis,José Rafael Lozada,James A Comiskey,Freddie C Draper,José Julio de Toledo,Gabriel Damasco,Nállarett Dávila,Roosevelt García-Villacorta,Alberto Vicentini,Fernando Cornejo Valverde,Alfonso Alonso,Luzmila Arroyo,Francisco Dallmeier,Vitor HF Gomes,Eliana M Jimenez,David Neill,Maria Cristina Peñuela Mora,Fernanda Antunes Carvalho,Fernanda Coelho de Souza,Kenneth J Feeley,Rogerio Gribel,Marcelo Petratti Pansonato,Marcos Ríos Paredes,Jos Barlow,Erika Berenguer,Kyle G Dexter,Joice Ferreira,Paul VA Fine,Marcelino Carneiro Guedes,Isau Huamantupa-Chuquimaco,Juan Carlos Licona,Toby Pennington,Boris Eduardo Villa Zegarra,Vincent Antoine Vos,Carlos Cerón,Émile Fonty,Terry W Henkel,Paul Maas,Edwin Pos,Marcos Silveira,Juliana Stropp,Raquel Thomas,Doug Daly,William Milliken,Guido Pardo Molina,Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira,Bianca Weiss Albuquerque,Wegliane Campelo,Thaise Emilio,Alfredo Fuentes,Bente Klitgaard,José Luis Marcelo Pena,Priscila F Souza,J Sebastián Tello,Corine Vriesendorp,Jerome Chave

Journal

Nature ecology & evolution

Published Date

2024/3/11

Landscape and management influences on smallholder agroforestry yields show shifts during a climate shock

Sustaining yields for smallholder perennial agriculture under a rapidly changing climate regime may require consideration of landscape features and on-farm management decisions in tandem. Optimising landscape and management may not be possible for maximising yields in any one year but maintaining heterogeneous landscapes could be an important climate adaptation strategy. In this study, we observed elevation, forest patch and shade management gradients affecting smallholder coffee (Coffea arabica) yields in a ‘normal’ year versus the 2015/16 El Niño. We generally found a benefit to yields from having leguminous shade trees and low canopy openness, while maintaining diverse shade or varying canopy openness had more complex influences during a climate shock. The two years of observed climate shock were dominated by either drought or high temperatures, with yield responses generally …

Authors

Alexandra C Morel,Sheleme Demissie,Techane Gonfa,Zia Mehrabi,Sami Rifai,Mark A Hirons,Tadesse Woldemariam Gole,John Mason,Constance L McDermott,Emily Boyd,Elizabeth JZ Robinson,Yadvinder Malhi,Ken Norris

Journal

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

Published Date

2024/6/1

Contrasting nutrient strategies and thresholds in tropical forests revealed by whole ecosystem nutrient flux

Soil nutrients can limit productivity on highly weathered soils, but vegetation can adopt a range of strategies to maintain productivity under low nutrient supply. Using a full nutrient flux approach, we examine nutrient use strategies across nine old-growth and logged lowland moist tropical forests in Malaysian Borneo. Soil nutrient availability was a weak predictor of productivity. We explored the reasons for this by examining the vegetation biogeochemical cycles of five key macro-and micronutrients. For nitrogen (N), we found very little evidence of nutrient limitation. Four nutrients showed evidence of shifting strategies under limitation, with clear evidence for quantifiable thresholds below which compensation strategies were invoked and contrasting resource optimization strategies employed for each nutrient. For potassium (K), enhanced leaf resorption was the primary strategy for coping with supply limitation. For calcium, shifting stoichiometry was the primary strategy. For phosphorus (P), a combination of both enhanced resorption and shifting stoichiometry was observed. The strongest relationships were found for P and K, with old-growth forests at this site showing some limitation and logged forests having sufficient nutrient supply. This study reveals the potential of nutrient flux approaches to describe the multifaceted and non-linear relationship between soil nutrient supply and uptake, and biomass productivity.

Authors

Takeshi Inagawa,Terhi Riutta,Khoon Lip Kho,Noreen Majalap,Reuben Nilus,Yadvinder Malhi

Published Date

2024/3/8

Tree Surface Area Allometry

Utilizing terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and three-dimensional modeling, this study quantitatively assessed the woody surface areas of 2161 trees across ecosystems encompassing both tropical and temperate forests. TLS enables precise measurement of tree structures at unprecedented scales. This research builds on theoretical scaling relationships with empirical data, significantly refining our understanding of tree woody surface area. Key findings indicate that direct measurements diverge from theoretical predictions, particularly in the finer branch structures, suggesting modifications to existing allometric models might be necessary. This integration of direct measurements with TLS not only challenges established theories but also enhances our capability to accurately model tree surface area, which is key for understanding forest carbon dynamics and metabolic scaling in ecological systems.

Authors

Alexander Shenkin,Phil Wilkes,Brian J Enquist,Alvaro Lau Sarmiento,Andrew Burt,Kim Calders,Pasi Raumonen,Lisa Patrick Bentley,Mathias Disney,Yadvinder Malhi

Journal

bioRxiv

Published Date

2024

Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities

Aim Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types. Location Amazonia. Taxon Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots). Methods Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega‐phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran's eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We …

Authors

Bruno Garcia Luize,David Bauman,Hans ter Steege,Clarisse Palma‐Silva,Iêda Leão Do Amaral,Luiz de Souza Coelho,Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos,Diógenes de Andrade Lima Filho,Rafael P Salomão,Florian Wittmann,Carolina V Castilho,Marcelo de Jesus Veiga Carim,Juan Ernesto Guevara,Oliver L Phillips,William E Magnusson,Daniel Sabatier,Juan David Cardenas Revilla,Jean‐François Molino,Mariana Victória Irume,Maria Pires Martins,José Renan da Silva Guimarães,José Ferreira Ramos,Olaf S Bánki,Maria Teresa Fernandez Piedade,Dairon Cárdenas López,Nigel CA Pitman,Layon O Demarchi,Jochen Schöngart,Evlyn Márcia Moraes de Leão Novo,Percy Núñez Vargas,Thiago Sanna Freire Silva,Eduardo Martins Venticinque,Angelo Gilberto Manzatto,Neidiane Farias Costa Reis,John Terborgh,Katia Regina Casula,Euridice N Honorio Coronado,Abel Monteagudo Mendoza,Juan Carlos Montero,Flávia RC Costa,Ted R Feldpausch,Adriano Costa Quaresma,Nicolás Castaño Arboleda,Charles Eugene Zartman,Timothy J Killeen,Beatriz S Marimon,Ben Hur Marimon‐Junior,Rodolfo Vasquez,Bonifacio Mostacedo,Rafael L Assis,Chris Baraloto,Dário Dantas Do Amaral,Julien Engel,Pascal Petronelli,Hernán Castellanos,Marcelo Brilhante de Medeiros,Marcelo Fragomeni Simon,Ana Andrade,José Luís Camargo,William F Laurance,Susan GW Laurance,Lorena Maniguaje Rincón,Juliana Schietti,Thaiane R Sousa,Emanuelle de Sousa Farias,Maria Aparecida Lopes,José Leonardo Lima Magalhães,Henrique Eduardo Mendonça Nascimento,Helder Lima de Queiroz,Gerardo A Aymard C,Roel Brienen,Pablo R Stevenson,Alejandro Araujo‐Murakami,Bruno Barçante Ladvocat Cintra,Tim R Baker,Yuri Oliveira Feitosa,Hugo F Mogollón,Joost F Duivenvoorden,Carlos A Peres,Miles R Silman,Leandro Valle Ferreira,José Rafael Lozada,James A Comiskey,José Julio de Toledo,Gabriel Damasco,Nállarett Dávila,Freddie C Draper,Roosevelt García‐Villacorta,Aline Lopes,Alberto Vicentini,Fernando Cornejo Valverd,Alfonso Alonso,Luzmila Arroyo,Francisco Dallmeier,Vitor HF Gomes,Eliana M Jimenez,David Neill,Maria Cristina Peñuela Mora,Janaína Costa Noronha,Daniel PP de Aguiar,Flávia Rodrigues Barbosa,Yennie K Bredin,Rainiellen de Sá Carpanedo,Fernanda Antunes Carvalho,Fernanda Coelho de Souza,Kenneth J Feeley,Rogerio Gribel,Torbjørn Haugaasen,Joseph E Hawes,Marcelo Petratti Pansonato,Marcos Ríos Paredes,Domingos de Jesus Rodrigues,Jos Barlow,Erika Berenguer,Izaias Brasil da Silva,Maria Julia Ferreira,Joice Ferreira,Paul VA Fine,Marcelino Carneiro Guedes,Carolina Levis,Juan Carlos Licona,Boris Eduardo Villa Zegarra,Vincent Antoine Vos,Carlos Cerón,Flávia Machado Durgante,Émile Fonty,Terry W Henkel,John Ethan Householder,Isau Huamantupa‐Chuquimaco,Marcos Silveira,Juliana Stropp,Raquel Thomas,Doug Daly,William Millike,Guido Pardo Molina,Toby Pennington,Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira,Bianca Weiss Albuquerque,Wegliane Campelo,Alfredo Fuentes,Bente Klitgaard,José Luis Marcelo Pena,J Sebastián Tello,Corine Vriesendorp,Jerome Chave,Anthony Di Fiore,Renato Richard Hilário,Luciana de Oliveira Pereira,Juan Fernando Phillips,Gonzalo Rivas‐Torres

Journal

Journal of Biogeography

Published Date

2024/2/17

Large invertebrate decomposers contribute to faster leaf litter decomposition in Fraxinus excelsior-dominated habitats: Implications of ash dieback

Leaf litter decomposition is a major component of nutrient cycling which depends on the quality and quantity of the leaf material. Ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior, decay time ∼ 0.4 years) are declining throughout Europe due to a fungal pathogen (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), which is likely to alter biochemical cycling across the continent. The ecological impact of losing species with fast decomposing leaves is not well quantified. In this study we examine how decomposition of three leaf species with varying decomposition rates including ash, sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus, decay time ∼ 1.4 years), and beech (Fagus sylvatica, decay time ∼ 6.8 years) differ in habitats with and without ash as the dominant overstorey species. Ten plots (40 m × 40 m) were set up in five locations representing ash dominated and non-ash dominated habitats. In each plot mesh bags (30 cm × 30 cm, 0.5 mm aperture) with a single leaf …

Authors

Cecilia AL Dahlsjö,Thomas Atkins,Yadvinder Malhi

Journal

Heliyon

Published Date

2024/3/15