Tom Harwood is the Associate Director of the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. He is currently working with the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery to set local case studies within their regional biodiversity context, and build a globally consistent environmental infrastructure to support the next generation of integrative decision tools addressing biodiversity, land use and climate change.
He is a spatial ecological modeller with advanced software engineering skills who works across a wide range of environmental domains at fine resolution from local to global scales. Over the course of his career, Tom has worked on epidemiology, geneflow, weather and microclimate generation, terrain adjustment and downscaling of climate, land use and crop modelling. Tom has a particular focus on the delivery of spatial metrics for practical policy to address biodiversity loss and climate change, and joined Oxford from CSIRO in Australia in 2023, where he has been supporting national planning and monitoring for 14 years. Another key focus of Tom’s work is the estimation of the local condition of habitat using different remote sensing based approaches, as a prerequisite for biodiversity analysis.
Related Research Themes
Systems
Developing a novel Analysis and Decision Platform to integrate nature recovery into land-use and infrastructure planning, and exploring scenarios that can deliver local, national and international commitments to nature, climate change and sustainable development.
Human health and wellbeing
Exploring, understanding, and determining those aspects of nature which directly contribute to improvements in physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Related Projects
NATURE Impacts: National Assessment Tool for Understanding Relative Environmental Impacts
A forward-looking tool to track global progress, prioritise national action, and maximise impact for nature recovery
From greening to wellbeing: Multi-scale analysis of green infrastructure and mental health at population level within the UK
A mixed methods investigation into how green infrastructure influences mental health across diverse communities and landscapes in the UK
