Research in the Thomas Lab

Dr. Thomas has been preoccupied with the comparative biology of trees and forest responses to the intentional and accidental impacts of humans for some 25 years. Sean has been at the University of Toronto since 1999, with appointments as a Canada Research Chair and NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Biochar and Ecosystem Restoration.

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Dr. Thomas’ research focuses on how trees and forests respond to human impacts – intentional impacts through forest management, and unintentional impacts via local, regional, and global changes in the environment. In this effort, he tries to link an understanding of functional ecology and ecophysiology of trees (“how trees work”) to patterns of growth, mortality, recruitment, reproduction, at the population scale, to patterns community composition, and to ecosystem processes, in particular carbon flux (“how forests work”). Sean Thomas’ lab is currently involved in projects in temperate and boreal forests in Canada, and tropical forests at a variety of sites.

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Topics explored: Applied forest ecology and silviculture, comparative ecology and ecophysiology of forest trees, forest canopy biology, ecological aspects of global environmental change, old-world tropical forests.