dpurves@microsoft.com
I am a permanent research scientist in the Computational Ecology and Environmental Science Group (CEES), a part of the Computational Science Lab at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Within CEES, I lead the Plant Ecology research unit, and lead some of the work in the Spatial Ecology and Biogeography research unit.
The research undertaken within the Plant Ecology research unit aims to provide -- eventually -- a quantitative, scientific basis for the management of plant communities. An overarching concern is the impact of climate change on plant communities, and what we can do to mitigate these effects. Depending on the project, the research requires everything from pure theorizing, to making new discoveries about basic ecological processes, to developing accurate predictive models, to using these models to solve for optimal management / policy. Most of the research involves non-linear models, large amounts of data, and the computational statistics needed to combine the two. Hopefully, the new software tools that we are developing in order to carry out this research will enable others to generate predictive models for a wide variety of natural and artificial complex systems.
Most of the projects within the plant ecology research unit fall under the banner of Forest Dynamics. These include:
* Scaling from trees to forests
* Understanding and predicting tree mortality
Additional projects in Plant Ecology, not restricted to trees and forests, include:
* Species distributions and climate change
Bio
I studied ecology at Cambridge University, did a PhD in ecological modelling at the University of York (UK, working under Prof. Richard Law), and spent nearly 6 years as a postdoc in the EEB Department at Princeton University (working under Prof. Stephen Pacala), before joining MSR Cambridge in 2007. My research, which focuses on the dynamics of populations and communities of plants, especially forests, has led to around 20 publications in peer-reviewed journals including Science, PNAS, Proc Roy Soc B, Global Change Biology, Ecology, Ecological Monographs and Ecology Letters. I co-supervise several PhD students at European universities (see below), and since 2008 have been an affiliate lecturer at Cambridge University.
Current PhD students:
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Emily Lines (University of Cambridge) Corresponding CEES project: scaling from trees to forests |
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Silvia Caldararu (University of Edinburgh) Corresponding CEES project: predictive modelling of forest VOC emissions |
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Nikee Groot (University of Leeds) Corresponding CEES project: understanding and predicting tree mortality |
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Sadia Ahmed (Imperial College London) Corresponding CEES project: predictive modelling of tropical deforestation |
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Isabela Rosa (Imperial College London) Corresponding CEES project: predictive modelling of tropical deforestation
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- Drew Purves, The demography of range boundaries vs range cores in Eastern US tree species, in Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, vol. 276, pp. 1477-1484, 25 February 2009
- Jeremy W Lichstein, Jonathan Dushoff, Kiona Ogle, Anping Chen, Drew W Purves, John Caspersen, and Stephen W Pacala, [in press] Unlocking the forest inventory data: relating individual-tree performance to unmeasured environmental factors, in Ecological Applications, 2009
- Daniel Montoya, Drew W Purves, Itziar Rodriguez, and Miguel A Zavala, [in press] Do species distribution models explain spatial structure within tree species ranges?, in Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2009
- Nikolay Strigul, Denis Pristinski, Drew W Purves, Jonathan Dushoff, and Stephen W Pacala, Scaling from trees to forests: tractable macroscopic equations for forest dynamics, in Ecological Monographs, vol. 78, no. 4, pp. 523-545, November 2008
- Drew W Purves, Jeremy W Lichstein, Nikolay Strigul, and Stephen W Pacala, Predicting and understanding forest dynamics using a simple tractable model, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 29 October 2008
- Lindsay A Turnbull, Mark Rees, and Drew W Purves, Why equalising trade-offs aren’t always neutral, in Ecology Letters, vol. 11, pp. 1037-1046, October 2008
- Lindsay A Turnbull, Cloe Paul-Victor, Bernhard Schmid, and Drew W Purves, Growth rates, seed size and physiology - Do small-seeded species really grow faster?, in Ecology, vol. 89, pp. 1352-1363, January 2008
- Drew W Purves, Jeremy W Lichstein, and Stephen W Pacala, Crown Plasticity and Competition for Canopy Space: A New Spatially Implicit Model Parameterized for 250 North American Tree Species, in PLoS-One, vol. 2, no. 9, pp. e870, January 2007
- Thomas P Adams, Drew W Purves, and Stephen W Pacala, Understanding height-structured competition in forests: is there an R* for light?, in Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, vol. 274, no. 1628, pp. 3039-3047, January 2007












