*Key 4C papers are marked in bold. Working papers have not yet been peer reviewed.
Carbon Credits
"Scientific credibility for high-integrity voluntary carbon markets", Tom Swinfield, Eleanor Toye Scott. Cambridge Open Engage, January 2025.
"Mitigating risk of credit reversal in nature-based climate solutions by optimally anticipating carbon release", E-ping Rau, James Gross, David Coomes, Thomas Swinfield, Anil Madhavapeddy, Andrew Balmford, Srinivasan Keshav. Carbon Management, August 2024.
"Nature-based credits at a crossroads", Thomas Swinfield, Siddarth Shrikanth, Joseph W. Bull, Anil Madhavapeddy, Sophus O. S. E. zu Ermgassen, Nature Sustainability, August 2024.
"PACT Tropical Moist Forest Accreditation Methodology v2.1", Andrew Balmford, David Coomes, Michael Dales, Patrick Ferris, James Hartup, Sadiq Jaffer, Srinivasan Keshav, Miranda Lam, Anil Madhavapeddy, Robin Message, E-Ping Rau, Thomas Swinfield, Charlotte Wheeler, Abby Williams. Working paper on Cambridge Open Engage, August 2024.
"Framework for assessing justice and equity impacts of nature-based solutions projects", Miranda Lam, James Hartup, Andrew Balmford, E-Ping Rau, Charlotte Wheeler, Thomas Swinfield. Working paper on Cambridge Open Engage, May 2024.
"Global, robust and comparable digital carbon assets", Sadiq Jaffer, Patrick Ferris, Thomas Swinfield, Derek Sorensen, Robin Message, Srinivasan Keshav, Anil Madhavapeddy. In IEEE ICBC 2024, May 2024.
"Conflicts and opportunities for commercial tree plantation expansion and biodiversity restoration across Brazil", Gianluca Cerullo, Thomas Worthington, Pedro Brancalion, Joyce Brandão, Francisco d'Albertas, Alison Eyres, Thomas Swinfield, David Edwards, Andrew Balmford. Global Change Biology, March 2024.
"A call to develop carbon credits for second-growth forests", Pedro H. S. Brancalion, Andrew Balmford, Charlotte E. Wheeler, Ricardo R. Rodrigues, Bernardo B. N. Strassburg, Thomas Swinfield. Nature Ecology & Evolution, Jan 2024.
"PACT Tropical Moist Forest Accreditation Methodology v2.0", Andrew Balmford, David Coomes, Michael Dales, Patrick Ferris, James Hartup, Sadiq Jaffer, Srinivasan Keshav, Miranda Lam, Anil Madhavapeddy, Robin Message, E-Ping Rau, Thomas Swinfield, Charlotte Wheeler. Working paper on Cambridge Open Engage, December 2023.
"Carbon Credits and the 'Peter Pan' forests", Thomas Swinfield, Pedro Brancalion, Andrew Balmford, Charlotte Wheeler, Bernardo Strassburg. Working paper on Cambridge Open Engage, Nov 2023.
"Realizing the social value of impermanent carbon credits", Andrew Balmford, Srinivasan Keshav, Frank Venmans, David Coomes, Ben Groom, Anil Madhavapeddy, Thomas Swinfield. Nature Climate Change, Aug 2023. (OpenEngage version) (news articles: Cambridge, Mongabay)
Abstract: A new framework linking economics with remote-sensing means impermanent carbon reduction can be directly compared with permanent drawdown.
"PACT Tropical Moist Forest Accreditation Methodology v1.0", Andrew Balmford, David Coomes, Michael Dales, Patrick Ferris, James Hartup, Sadiq Jaffer, Srinivasan Keshav, Miranda Lam, Anil Madhavapeddy, Robin Message, E-Ping Rau, Thomas Swinfield, Charlotte Wheeler. Working paper on Cambridge Open Engage, June 2023.
"Carbon Credibility Threatens Forests", Andrew Balmford, Pedro HS Brancalion, David Coomes, Ben Filewod, Ben Groom, Alejandro Guizar-Coutiño, Julie PG Jones, Srinivasan Keshav, Andreas Kontoleon, Anil Madhavapeddy, Yadvinder Malhi, Erin O Sills, Bernardo BN Strassburg, Frank Venmans, Thales AP West, Charlotte Wheeler and Tom Swinfield. Science, May 2023.
"Cambridge Carbon Impact: Evaluating carbon credit claims and co-benefits", Tom Swinfield and Andrew Balmford. Working paper on Cambridge Open Engage, March 2023.
Additionality, Permanence and Leakage
"Time to fix the biodiversity leak", Andrew Balmford et al. In Science, February 2025.
"Evaluating the impacts of a large-scale voluntary REDD+ project in Sierra Leone", Mandy Malan, Rachel Carmenta, Elisabeth Gsottbauer, Paul Hofman, Andreas Kontoleon, Tom Swinfield, Maarten Voors. In Nature Sustainability, January 2024.
"The global impact of EU forest protection policies", Gianluca Cerullo, Jos Barlow, Matthew Betts, David Edwards, Alison Eyres, Filipe França, Rachael Garret, Thomas Swinfield, Eleanor Tew, Thomas White, Andrew Balmford. Science, August 2023.
"Enhancing the ecological value of oil palm agriculture through set-asides", Jake E Bicknell, Jesse R O’Hanley, Paul R Armsworth, Eleanor M Slade, Nicolas J Deere, Simon L Mitchell, David Hemprich-Bennett, Victoria Kemp, Stephen J Rossiter, Owen T Lewis, David A Coomes, Agnes L Agama, Glen Reynolds, Matthew J Struebig, Zoe G Davies. Nature Sustainability, Feb 2023.
"A global evaluation of the effectiveness of voluntary REDD+ projects at reducing deforestation and degradation in the moist tropics", Alejandro Guizar-Coutiño, Julia P G Jones, Andrew Balmford, Rachel Carmenta, David A Coomes. Conservation Biology 36(6), Dec 2022.
"Elevated fires during COVID-19 lockdown and the vulnerability of protected areas", Johanna Eklund, Julia P. G. Jones, Matti Räsänen, Jonas Geldmann, Ari-Pekka Jokinen, Adam Pellegrini, Domoina Rakotobe, O. Sarobidy Rakotonarivo, Tuuli Toivonen, Andrew Balmford. Nature Sustainability (vol 5, pg 603–609), May 2022.
"The role of different governance regimes in reducing native vegetation conversion and promoting regrowth in the Brazilian Amazon", Helena N. Alves-Pinto, Carlos L.O. Cordeiro, Jonas Geldmann, Harry D. Jonas, Marilia Palumbo Gaiarsa, Andrew Balmford, James E.M. Watson, Agnieszka Ewa Latawiec, Bernardo Strassburg. Biological Conservation (267), Feb 2022.
"A global-level assessment of the effectiveness of protected areas at resisting anthropogenic pressures", Jonas Geldmann, Andrea Manica, Neil D. Burgess, Lauren Coad, Andrew Balmford. PNAS (Vol 116 No. 46), Oct 2019.
"Protected area effectiveness in reducing conversion in a rapidly vanishing ecosystem: the Brazilian Cerrado", Tharsila Carranza, Andrew Balmford, Valerie Kapos, & Andrea Manica. Conservation Letters (00, pg 1-8). 2013.
Biodiversity
"LIFE: A metric for quantitively mapping the impact of land-cover change on global extinctions", Alison Eyres, Thomas Ball, Michael W. Dales, Tom Swinfield, Andy Arnell, Daniele Baisero, América Paz Durán, Jonathan Green, Anil Madhavapeddy and Andrew Balmford. In the Royal Society Philosophical Transactions B, Jan 2025. (news article)
"Sustainable high-yield farming is essential for bending the curve of biodiversity loss", Andrew Balmford, Ian Bateman, Alison Eyres, Thomas Swinfield, Thomas Ball, The Royal Society, 2024.
"Limits to the accurate and generalizable use of soundscapes to monitor biodiversity", Sarab S Sethi, Avery Bick, Robert M Ewers, Holger Klinck, Vijay Ramesh, Mao-Ning Tuanmu, David A Coomes. Nature Ecology & Evolution (vol 7, issue 9). Sep 2023.
"Current conservation policies risk accelerating biodiversity loss", Ian Bateman, Andrew Balmford. Nature (volume 618, issue 7966). Aug 2023. (news article).
"Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity", Jedediah F. Brodie, Jayasilan Mohd-Azlan, Cheng Chen, Oliver R. Wearn, Mairin C. M. Deith, James G. C. Ball, Eleanor M. Slade, David F. R. P. Burslem, Shu Woan Teoh, Peter J. Williams, An Nguyen, Jonathan H. Moore, Scott J. Goetz, Patrick Burns, Patrick Jantz, Christopher R. Hakkenberg, Zaneta M. Kaszta, Sam Cushman, David Coomes, Olga E. Helmy, Glen Reynolds, Jon Paul Rodríguez, Walter Jetz & Matthew Scott Luskin. Nature 620, 807-812, August 2023
Mobile and Remote Sensing
“An app for tree trunk diameter estimation from coarse optical depth maps", Zhenpeng Feng, Mingyue Xie, Amelia Holcomb, Srinivasan Keshav, Ecological Informatics, 82, Sep 2024"
Using Barlow Twins to Create Representations from Cloud-corrupted Remote Sensing Time Series", Madeline C. Lisaius, Andrew Blake, Srinivasan Keshav and Clement Atzberger, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing , 17 , pp13162-13168, August 2024
“From Spectra to Biophysical Insights; End-to-End Learning with a Biased Radiative Transfer Model”, Yihang She, Clement Atzberger, Andrew Blake, and Srinivasan Keshav, Proc. ICLR CCAI Workshop, May 2024.
"Computational tools for assessing forest recovery with GEDI shots and forest change maps", Amelia Holcomb, Simon V. Mathis, David A. Coomes, Srinivasan Keshav, Science of Remote Sensing (vol 8). Dec 2023.
"Accurate delineation of individual tree crowns in tropical forests from aerial RGB imagery using Mask R-CNN", James G. C. Ball, Sebastian H. M. Hickman, Tobias D. Jackson, Xian Jing Koay, James Hirst, William Jay, Matthew Archer, Mélaine Aubry-Kientz, Grégoire Vincent, David A. Coomes. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. May 2023.
"A Case for Planetary Computing", Amelia Holcomb, Michael Dales, Patrick Ferris, Sadiq Jaffer, Thomas Swinfield, Alison Eyres, Andrew Balmford, David Coomes, Srinivasan Keshav, Anil Madhavapeddy. Working paper on arXiv (2303.04501), March 2023.
"Surveying coconut trees using high-resolution satellite imagery in remote atolls of the Pacific Ocean", Juepeng Zheng, Shuai Yuan, Wenzhao Wu, Weijia Li, Le Yu, Haohuan Fu, David Coomes. Remote Sensing of Environment (Vol 287) March 2023.
"Robust Single-Image Tree Diameter Estimation with Mobile Phones", Amelia Holcomb, Linze Tong, Srinivasan Keshav. Remote Sensing 15(3). Jan 2023.
"Unsupervised Diffusion and Volume Maximization-Based Clustering of Hyperspectral Images", Sam L Polk, Kangning Cui, Aland HY Chan, David A Coomes, Robert J Plemmons, James M Murphy. Remote Sensing (Vol 15, Issue 4). Jan 2023.
