Photo: Anjali Vyas-Brannick / SEI
Thomas studies how the production and movement of food shapes the fate of wild species, and how to measure those impacts in terms that can inform decision-making.
Following a PhD with a focus on land-use modelling at the University of East Anglia, he joined the Conservation Science Group at the Cambridge University. There, he contributed to the development of a novel biodiversity metric centred around species extinctions (LIFE) alongside a trade model linked to geospatial data on food production, to be able estimate the biodiversity impacts of food consumption in a given place. He also led a theoretical population modelling study to examine the relationship between species extinction risks and carrying capacity.
He is now based jointly in Stockholm Environment Institute and the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at the University of York, where he uses stochastic modelling approaches to examine global patterns of agricultural production, trade, and land-use to understand current and future impacts on wild species populations.
