Mark Maslin

Mark Andrew Maslin (born 1968) is a professor of Earth System Science at the University College London and the Natural History Museum of Denmark. He has published numerous books on a variety of environmental topics including climate change, ecology, the anthropocene and human evolution. His scientific work consists of more than 200 publications. He is joint Pro-Vice-Provost of the UCL Climate Crisis Grand Challenge. He is also Strategy Advisor to Lansons, Net Zero Now, Sheep Inc and CSR Board member of Sopra Steria. He co-founded and helped to run the AI geoanalytics company Rezatec Ltd from 2012 to 2023. He is also a founding member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group led by Sir David King. In 2024 he was Special Advisor to the UK Parliament Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into Climate Change and Security.

Education

Maslin was born in 1968. He received his BSc (Hons) in Physical Geography (including Geology and Chemistry at honours level) from the University of Bristol in 1989. A few years later, in 1993 he attained his PhD for "The study of the palaeoceanography of the N.E. Atlantic during Pleistocene" from the Darwin College, University of Cambridge, having Nicholas Shackleton and Ellen Thomas as his supervisors.

Scientific work

Maslin has published over 210 scientific papers, some of them in journals such as Nature, having received approximately 31,600 citations according to ResearchGate and more than 39,000 according to Google Scholar, where his h-index is given to be 79 and an i10 index of 202.

Maslin teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the University College London and has supervised many PhD and MSc dissertations.

From 2014 to 2019, he was Director of The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership. He was also the co-founder of Rezatec Ltd. In 2024 he set up the UCL Centre for Sustainable Aviation to provide expert advice and support to help the aviation sector decarbonise now.

Notable views

The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of America

The Spanish and Portuguese colonisation of the Americas led to the death of 56 million people, approximately 90% of the indigenous population, in less than 100 years. This was because the indigenous population has no natural immunity to the diseases brought across the Atlantic Ocean. The population collapse led to the collapse of most of the agriculture and infrastructure. According to research by Alex Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis, the global temperature decrease between 1550 and 1700 as forest regeneration resulted in additional carbon sequestration. Describing this decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide as the orbis spike, Maslin and Lewis state that the event could be viewed as the beginning of the Anthropocene.

Early Human Evolution

Mark Maslin’s research has radically altered our views on the causes of early human evolution in Africa particularly with regards to speciation, brain expansion and dispersal events. By creating and compiling palaeoclimate and hominin records he has proposed th
‘Pulsed Climate Variability’ hypothesis
Maslin and colleagues have shown that the slow drying out of the East African climate over the last 5 million years was punctuated by episodes of short, alternating periods of extreme wetness and aridity. These periods of extreme climate variability are characterised by the precessionally forced rapid appearance and disappearance of large, deep fresh-water lakes in the East African Rift Valley. These ephemeral lakes are only possible due to the dynamic tectonics of the region, which has produced so called Amplifier Lake basins. The ’Pulsed Climate Variability’ hypothesis overturned th
over-simplified ‘aridity hypothesis’
which has been the theory for human evolution for the last 20 years changing the paradigm and fundamentally altered our views of what caused human evolution in Africa.

Science communication

In the context of science communication, he has appeared on such shows as Melvyn Bragg's ''In Our Time'' and David Attenborough's ''Climate Change – The Facts'', at Talks at Google, on BBC's ''Newshour'', on Channel 4's '' Dispatches'' et al. Furthermore, he has written numerous books concerning environmental matters and has authored articles on such topics for ''The Conversation,'' ''The Guardian,'' ''The New York Times'' and other media.

Books

* Mark Maslin (2021), ''How to Save Our Planet: The Facts'', Penguin Life,
* Mark Maslin (2021), ''Climate Change, A Very Short Introduction'', 4th Edition, Oxford University Press,
* Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin (2018), ''The Human Planet'', Pelican Press,
* Mark Maslin (2017), ''The Cradle of Humanity'', Oxford University Press,
* Mark Maslin (2014), ''Climate Change, A Very Short Introduction'', 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press
* Mark Maslin (2013), ''Climate, A Very Short Introduction'', Oxford University Press
* Mark Maslin (2008), ''Global Warming, A Very Short Introduction'': 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press
* Mark Maslin (2004), ''Global Warming, A Very Short Introduction'', Oxford University Press
* Mark Maslin (2003), ''Etat d'urgence: Le ciel en colère'', Solar
* Mark Maslin (2002), ''Stormy Weather'', Apple Press,
* Mark Maslin (2002), ''The Coming Storm'', Barron's Educational Series,
* Mark Maslin (2002), ''Global Warming'', Colin Baxter Photography, UK,
* Mark Maslin (2002), ''Global Warming: Causes, Effects and the Future'', Voyageur Press, USA,
* Mark Maslin (2000), ''Earthquakes (a volume for 8-12 year olds)'', Wayland, Hove, UK. Hardback () (1999), Paperback ()
* Mark Maslin (2000), ''Storms (a volume for 8-12 year olds)'', Wayland, Hove, UK. Hardback () (1999), Paperback ()
* Emma Durham and Mark Maslin (2000), ''Floods'', Wayland, Hove, UK. Hardback () (1999), Paperback ()

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maslin, Mark
1968 births
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
Alumni of the University of Bristol
Academics of University College London
Living people
American earth scientists