Research students taken into the Environmental and Ecological Sciences Research Group are often supervised jointly in order to provide the necessary range of subject supervision and to allow projects to develop in line with the students' interests and to deal with the interfaces between disciplines where much current environmental interest is focused. Projects may be primarily field based, laboratory based or increasingly desk based studies. Students are encouraged to attend seminars and courses offered as part of M.Sc courses at King's or at other colleges if appropriate. Many of the current postgraduates in the group are from overseas which provides a stimulus for relevant work for developing countries. The group is attempting to broaden its funding base with applications for EC and ESRC funding of policy as well as science related PhD studentships.
Environmental management constitutes another prime focus of research.
Activity in this area spans a diverse range of organisms from cyanobacteria to sand antlions, from ocean macroalgae to tropical forests and grasslands, from starfish to small mammals, and from pollen fossils to fish fossils for reconstructing environmental change and phylogeny. Our overall aim is to understand how natural resources can be managed in an environmentally sustainable manner. This is increasingly important as we experience climatic change and as resource use causes environmental problems. In order to achieve this we need to have a fundamental understanding of ecosystems now and in the past, the processes which control them, and how we can use components to humankind's advantage. The stresses which influence biological processes are important in setting limits to the productivity of ecosystems and of individuals and communities within them.