Leap: Landscape Ecology and Primatology

Deforestation, encroachment and climate change are causing wide-scale disturbance of tropical forests, impacting the carbon cycle and causing the extinction of forest-dependent species. LEAP investigates how tropical deforestation and degradation affect ecosystem stability, species’ survival, and biodiversity.

What is LEAP?

LEAP brings together a team of conservationists, landscape ecologists, primatologists, biogeographers, and specialists in remote sensing, and micro-climate research.

We aim to achieve biodiversity conservation by providing the science to support smart and effective conservation strategies.

We use rapid and detailed assessments of forest structure, micro-climates, and habitat quality and relate it to animal diversity and behaviour. These observed relationships are then fed into models of varying types to predict species' responses to environmental change.