Yadvinder Malhi is an ecosystem ecologist who has advanced our understanding of the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems and how they are responding to the pressures of global change, including climate change, degradation and loss of large animals. This work integrates insights from ecosystem ecology into Earth System science, and has been characterised by a multidisciplinary approach that involves establishing broad networks of field research in tropical forests in some of the most remote and challenging regions of the world, and also application of micrometeorological approaches, global climate datasets, terrestrial ecosystem models and satellite remote sensing. This work has contributed to our understanding of the carbon sink in the terrestrial biosphere, and to how it may be vulnerable to climate warming.

His interests extend to a broad understanding of contemporary change in the biosphere and how to navigate it, through a combination of natural sciences, social sciences and policy approaches.