Ellis' research has explored long-term ecological changes in China's villages, and in 2008, he produced the first global map of
anthropogenic biomes (and coined the term "
anthrome") together with
Navin Ramankutty. In 2019, he helped to lead a massive collaboration of archaeologists to map land use changes around the world over the past 10,000 years. Ellis has published more than 100 scientific articles relating to global and local ecological changes caused by humans, and is a Global Highly Cited Researcher (Cross-Field, 2018, 2019, 2020). He has also written a number of articles and opinions communicating his work and other matters relating to humans as agents of ecological change, at
Science,
Nature,
PNAS,
New Scientist,
The New York Times,
Breakthrough Journal, and other venues. His first book,
Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction, was published in 2018. ==Awards==