Alex Cheesman

Alexander Cheesman is a Senior Research Fellow at James Cook University (Australia) and the University of Exeter (UK).

I am a plant eco-physiologist, soil scientist and National Geographic Explorer interested in the dynamic interaction of tropical systems in a changing world.  As an active researcher on issues of climate change, air pollution, nutrient management, and plant physiology i use a combination of field-studies and detailed manipulative experiments under controlled conditions to explore the potential future for our world. 

I completed my PhD in Soil and Water Science at the University of Florida in 2010, much of the field work for which was carried out in the remote wetlands of Panama. Subsequently, i worked at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in a position funded jointly by the Smithsonian Institute Global Earth Observatory (SIGEO) and Center for Tropical Forest Studies (CTFS, now called CTFS-ForestGEO) researching the effects of increasing temperature upon tree physiology.

In 2013 I moved to James Cook University (JCU) Australia to work on issues of tropical plant ecophysiology, and the capacity of plants to acclimate to a rapidly changing world. Since 2018 I have held a Senior Research Fellow role at JCU and the University of Exeter in the UK primarily working on TropOZ - an international effort to examine the impacts of air pollution (and in particular ozone) on tropical systems.