William Laurance is a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, and holds an Australian Laureate Fellowship, one of Australia’s highest scientific awards. He also holds the Prince Bernhard Chair in International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University, Netherlands. 

Laurance received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.  His research focuses on the impacts of intensive land-uses, such as habitat fragmentation, logging, hunting and wildfires, on tropical forests and their biodiversity.  He is also interested in protected areas, climatic change, the impacts of roads and other infrastructure on biodiversity, and conservation policy.  His research over the past 35 years spans the tropical world, including the Amazon, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions.  To date he has published eight books and over 400 scientific and popular articles. 

A leading voice for conservation, Laurance believes that scientists must actively engage policy makers and the general public, as well as other scientists.  He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former president of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. 

Laurance has received many scientific honors including the BBVA Frontiers in Ecology and Conservation Biology Award, a Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation Biology, and the Heineken Environment Prize.  He is also founder and director of ALERT—the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers, a group that advocates for environmental sustainability.

Research Disciplines

• Environmental Science and Management (0502)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity (9608)

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Campbell M, Edwards W, Magrach A, Alamgir M, Porolak G, Mohandass D and Laurance W (2018) Edge disturbance drives liana abundance increase and alteration of liana–host tree interactions in tropical forest fragments. Ecology and Evolution, 8 (8). pp. 4237-4251
• de Oliveira Roque F, Menezes J, Northfield T, Ochoa-quintero J, Campbell M and Laurance W (2018) Warning signals of biodiversity collapse across gradients of tropical forest loss. Scientific Reports, 8.
• Fletcher R, Didham R, Banks-leite C, Barlow J, Ewers R, Rosindell J, Holt R, Gonzalez A, Pardini R, Damschen E, Melo F, Ries L, Prevedello J, Tscharntke T, Laurance W, Lovejoy T and Haddad N (2018) Is habitat fragmentation good for biodiversity? Biological Conservation, 226. pp. 9-15
• Gomes V, Ijff S, Raes N, Amaral I, Salamão R, Coelho L, De Almeida Matos F, Castilho C, Limo Filho D, López D, Guevara J, Magnusson W, Phillips O, Wittmann F, Veiga Carim M, Martins M, Irume M, Sabatier D, Molino J, Bánki O, da Silva Guimarães J, Pitman N, Fernandez Piedade M, Mendoza A, Luize B, Venticinque E, de Leão Novo E, Vargas P, Silva T, Manzatoo A, Terborgh J, Reis N, Montero J, Casula K, Marimon B, Marimon-junior B, Honorio Coronado N, Feldpausch T, Duque A, Zartman C, Arboleda N, Killeen T, Mostacedo B, Vásquez R, Schöngart J, Assis R, Medeiros M, Simon M, Andrade A, Laurance W, Camargo J, Demarchi L, Laurance S, de Sousa Farias E, Nascimento H, Revilla J, Quaresma A, Costa F, Vieira I, Cintra B, Castellanos H, Brienan R, Stevenson P, Feitosa Y, Duivenvoorden J, Aymard C. G, Mogollón H, Targhetta N, Comiskey J, Vicentini A, Lopes A, Damasco G, Dávila N, Garcia-Villacorta R, Levis C, Schietti J, Souza P, Emilio T, Alonso A, Neill D, Dallmeier F, Ferreira L, Araujo-Murakami A, Praia D, do Amaral D, Carvalho F, de Souza F, Feeley K, Arroyo L, Pansonato M, Gribel R, Villa B, Licona J, Fine P, Cerón C, Baraloto C, Jiménez E, Stropp J, Engel J, Silveira M, Mora M, Petronelli P, Maas P, Thomas-Caesar R, Henkel T, Daly D, Paredes M, Baker T, Fuentes A, Peres C, Chave J, Pena J, Dexter K, Silman M, Jørgensen P, Pennington T, De Fiore A, Valverde F, Phillips J, Rivas-Torres G, von Hildebrand P, van Andel T, Ruschel A, Prieto A, Rudas A, Hoffman B, Vela C, Barbosa E, Zent E, Gonzales G, Doza H, Miranda I, Guillaumet J, Pinto L, Bonates L, Silva N, Gómez R, Zent S, Gonzales T, Vos V, Malhi Y, Oliveira A, Cano A, Albuquerque B, Vriesendorp C, Correa D, Torre E, Van Der Heijden G, Ramírez-Angulo H, Ramos J, Young K, Rocha M, Nascimento M, Medina M, Tirado M, Wang O, Sierra R, Torres-Lezama A, Mendoza C, Ferreira C, Baider C, Villarroel D, Balslev H, Mesones I, Giraldo L, Casas L, Reategui M, Linares-Palomino R, Zagt R, Cárdenas S, Farfan-Rios W, Sampaio A, Pauletto D, Sandoval E, Arevalo F, Huamantupa-Chuquimaco I, Garcia-Cabrera K, Hernandez L, Gamarra L, Alexiades M, Pansini S, Cuenca W, Milliken W, Ricardo J, López-González G, Pos E and ter Steege H (2018) Species distribution modelling: contrasting presence-only models with plot abundance data. Scientific Reports, 8.
• Laurance W, Camargo J, Fearnside P, Lovejoy T, Williamson G, Mesquita R, Meyer C, Bobrowiec P and Laurance S (2018) An Amazonian rainforest and its fragments as a laboratory of global change. Biological Reviews, 93 (1). pp. 223-247
• Pardo L, Campbell M, Edwards W, Clements G and Laurance W (2018) Terrestrial mammal responses to oil palm dominated landscapes in Colombia. PLoS ONE, 13 (5).
• Pardo Vargas L, de Oliveira Roque F, Campbell M, Younes N, Edwards W and Laurance W (2018) Identifying critical limits in oil palm cover for the conservation of terrestrial mammals in Colombia. Biological Conservation, 227. pp. 65-73
• Sloan S, Campbell M, Alamgir M, Collier-Baker E, Nowak M, Usher G and Laurance W (2018) Infrastructure development and contested forest governance threaten the Leuser Ecosystem, Indonesia. Land Use Policy, 77. pp. 298-309
• Watson J, Evans T, Venter O, Williams B, Tulloch A, Stewart C, Thompson I, Ray J, Murray K, Salazar A, Mcalpine C, Potapov P, Walston J, Robinson J, Painter M, Wilkie D, Filardi C, Laurance W, Houghton R, Maxwell S, Granthem H, Samper C, Wang S, Laestadius L, Runting R, Silva-Chávez G, Ervin J and Lindenmayer D (2018) The exceptional value of intact forest ecosystems. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2. pp. 599-610
• Alamgir M, Campbell M, Sloan S, Goosem M, Clements G, Mahmoud M and Laurance W (2017) Economic, socio-political and environmental risks of road development in the tropics. Current Biology, 27 (20). pp. R1130-R1140
• Campbell M, Edwards W, Magrach A, Laurance S, Alamgir M, Porolak G and Laurance W (2017) Forest edge disturbance increases rattan abundance in tropical rain forest fragments. Scientific Reports, 7. pp. 1-12
• Collins C, Banks-Leite C, Brudvig L, Foster B, Cook W, Damschen E, Andrade A, Austin M, Camargo J, Driscoll D, Holt R, Laurance W, Nicholls A and Orrock J (2017) Fragmentation affects plant community composition over time. Ecography, 40 (1). pp. 119-130

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ResearchOnline@JCU stores 325+ research outputs authored by Prof Bill Laurance from 1999 onwards.

Current and recent Research Funding to JCU is shown by funding source and project.

Advisory Accreditation: I can be on your Advisory Panel as a Primary or Secondary Advisor.

These Higher Degree Research projects are either current or by students who have completed their studies within the past 5 years at JCU. Linked titles show theses available within ResearchOnline@JCU.

Current

• Social-ecological Impacts of Landscape Transitions in Southeast Asia (PhD , Secondary Advisor)

Completed

• Conservation challenges of wet-tropical nature reserves in north-east India (2015, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• Foreign Investments in African Extractive Industries: a Focus on China-Africa with Case Studies in Cameroon (2015, PhD , Associate Advisor)
• Regeneration and recovery dynamics of logged forests in the Solomon Islands (2017, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• Diversity and habitat use of medium-large sized mammals across oil palm landscapes in the Llanos region of Colombia (2018, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• Maintaining connectivity for tropical rainforest mammals in agricultural landscapes (2018, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• The ecological response of lianas to habitat fragmentation of a tropical rainforest (2016, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• The environmental and social impacts of roads in southeast Asia (2013, PhD , Primary Advisor)

The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
Note: Map points are indicative of the countries or states that institutions are associated with.