Laurance has authored eight books and has over 600 scientific and popular articles to his credit.
These include two edited volumes, as well as analyses of conservation-policy challenges in the Brazilian Amazon, Gabon, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea.
He has also synthesized changing trends, new initiatives, and major debates in tropical conservation science and policy.

He is among the most highly cited scientists globally in the fields of ecology and environmental science.
His works have been cited more than 65,000 times, and his Hirsch's h index of 128  (as per February 2020) is among the highest of any environmental scientist in the world.
He has published more than three dozen papers to date in Science and Nature.

He has conducted long-term research across the world's tropics, from the Amazon Basin to the Asia-Pacific region and Congo Basin.

In his long-term studies of habitat fragmentation in the Amazon Basin, he introduced concepts, including "biomass collapse", the "hyperdynamism hypothesis", the "landscape-divergence hypothesis", the large spatial scale of some edge effects, the key role of matrix tolerance in determining species' responses to fragmentation, and the importance of synergisms between fragmentation and other environmental insults.

His scientific interests include assessing the impacts of deforestation, logging, hunting, wildfires, road expansion, and climatic change on tropical ecosystems and biodiversity.

Laurance has also studied the drivers of global amphibian declines; quantifying the threats to tropical protected areas; evaluating potential effects of global atmospheric changes on the species composition, dynamics; and carbon storage of intact tropical forests; and understanding how droughts affect tropical tree communities.

Laurance is also involved with the Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative, a $15 million program run by Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution to train environmental decision-makers across Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Laurance also writes in popular magazines about environmental policies in the tropics.
Laurance has authored eight books and has over 600 scientific and popular articles to his credit. These include two edited volumes, as well as analyses of conservation-policy challenges in the Brazilian Amazon, Gabon, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea. He has also synthesized changing trends, new initiatives, and major debates in tropical conservation science and policy.
He is among the most highly cited scientists globally in the fields of ecology and environmental science. His works have been cited more than 65,000 times, and his Hirsch's h index of 128  (as per February 2020) is among the highest of any environmental scientist in the world. He has published more than three dozen papers to date in Science and Nature.
He has conducted long-term research across the world's tropics, from the Amazon Basin to the Asia-Pacific region and Congo Basin.
In his long-term studies of habitat fragmentation in the Amazon Basin, he introduced concepts, including "biomass collapse", the "hyperdynamism hypothesis", the "landscape-divergence hypothesis", the large spatial scale of some edge effects, the key role of matrix tolerance in determining species' responses to fragmentation, and the importance of synergisms between fragmentation and other environmental insults.
His scientific interests include assessing the impacts of deforestation, logging, hunting, wildfires, road expansion, and climatic change on tropical ecosystems and biodiversity.
Laurance has also studied the drivers of global amphibian declines; quantifying the threats to tropical protected areas; evaluating potential effects of global atmospheric changes on the species composition, dynamics; and carbon storage of intact tropical forests; and understanding how droughts affect tropical tree communities.
Laurance is also involved with the Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative, a $15 million program run by Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution to train environmental decision-makers across Latin America and Southeast Asia. Laurance also writes in popular magazines about environmental policies in the tropics.
William F. Laurance