Professor Leavitt’s research focuses a number of themes including;

Coupled Human-Natural Systems; Pathways of energy and mass transfer; Human impacts on environment; Climate change and social response; Long-term ecological research (LTER); Regulation of ecosystem structure and function; Variation as a system property; Social controls of biophysical environments; Paleolimnology and Paleoecology; Global cycles of major elements (C, N, P); Pollution ecology; Urbanization; Socio-economic trade-offs with ecosystem services; Centennial-scale effects of agricultural development; Regulation of primary production; Limnology and Aquatic Ecology; Environmental change; Disturbance; Regulation of food-web structure; Water.