A new study published in Global and Planetary Change by SPECIAL group PI Sandy Harrison and PhD student Xin Liu looks at how we can reconstruct population density across Northwest…Read More >
Jiaze Li
Jiaze Li Post-Doctoral Research Assistant Jiaze is a PDRA at the University of Reading working on functional biodiversity. Her research focuses on how deep-time climate shapes global plant diversity, how…Read More >
Wildfires on a changing planet
Exciting new research from the SPECIAL group has been published in Nature Communications. This study, led by Olivia Haas (SPECIAL group post-doctoral researcher), investigates how sensitive parts of the wildfire…Read More >
Jianpu Bian
Jianpu Bian Postdoctoral Research Associate Jianpu is a PDRA working on long-term transient vegetation simulations in the mid-Holocene, and his background is climate dynamics and paleoclimate modelling. Before that,…Read More >
ACER2: The Abrupt Climate Changes and Environmental Responses Database (version 2) Description: The Abrupt Climate Changes and Environmental Responses (ACER) database (Sánchez Goñi et al., 2017) was originally developed…Read More >
How past climate events can help us understand future trends in climate warming
A new study on Dansgaard-Oeschger events A new publication led by SPECIAL group post-doctoral researcher Mengmeng Liu has recently been published in Climate of the Past. This paper “A global…Read More >
Isidora Xenaki
Isidora is a PhD student based in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Reading. Her research focuses on identifying the importance of climate, vegetation, and…Read More >
Optimality theory captures global sapwood:leaf area ratio in a new study
A new paper from SPECIAL group PI Sandy Harrison has recently been published in New Phytologist. The paper looks at the ratio between sapwood to leaf area in plants using…Read More >
Global Optimality-Based Model of C3 and C4 Plant Distribution
A new publication involving SPECIAL group PI Sandy Harrison has recently been published in Communications Earth & Environment, sharing work from the Alienor Lavergne on global optimality-based modelling of C3…Read More >
New Paper by PhD Graduate Theo Keeping – Global Climate Patterns Shape Wildfire Risk in the United States
In the second half of 2025, SPECIAL Group research student Theo Keeping graduated with a PhD from the University of Reading. One of the chapters from his thesis has now…Read More >
