Erle Ellis

Professor

  • Oxford Martin School
  • School of Geography and the Environment

Erle Ellis is Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) where he directs the Anthroecology Laboratory.

His research investigates the ecology of human landscapes at local to global scales to inform sustainable stewardship of the biosphere in the Anthropocene. His recent work examines long-term changes in Earth’s ecology produced by human societies through the concept of anthropogenic biomes, or anthromes, a term he introduced in 2008.

He has developed online tools for global synthesis of local knowledge (GLOBE) and inexpensive tools for mapping landscapes in 3D (Ecosynth). He is a Global Highly Cited Researcher, a UMBC Presidential Research Professor, a lead author on the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment, a Fellow of the Global Land Programme, a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute and a former member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. He teaches environmental science and landscape ecology at UMBC and has taught ecology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. His first book, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction was published by Oxford University Press in 2018.

Related Outputs

Systems

An aspirational approach to planetary futures

Erle C. Ellis, Yadvinder Malhi, Hannah Ritchie, Jasper Montana, Sandra Díaz, David Obura, Susan Clayton, Melissa Leach, Laura Pereira, Emma Marris, Michael Muthukrishna, Bojie Fu, Peter Frankopan, Molly K. Grace, Samira Barzin, Krushil Watene, Nicholas Depsky, Josefin Pasanen & Pedro Conceição

Nature (2025)

A new paper in Nature Prevailing frameworks to address planetary environmental challenges tend to focus on setting goals, targets, or boundaries to limit human harm to ecosystems or species. Here we propose an aspirational approach aimed at empowering people to shape a better future for all of life on Earth.