John Jeffrey Ewel is an emeritus professor and tropical succession researcher in the department of biology at the University of Florida.
[1] After three years, Ewel returned to the United States and completed his M.S degree with Hugh Popenoe at the University of Florida, focusing on litter decay in Guatemalan second-growth vegetation.
[1][4][5] In 2017 Ewel was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "for distinguished contributions to the field of ecology, particularly to our understanding of tropical ecosystem functioning and management".
[6] Ewel's research was conducted on successional landscapes by examining the regrowth and recovery following agriculture practices in Guatemala, Sarawak, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica.
He examined the succession in its natural occurrence as well as in some cases were human-induced second growth by burning the forest to represent a farmer clearing a field for crop production.