Her research primarily focuses on savanna ecosystems within the context of global climate change as well as the exploration of fire ecology and earth-system feedbacks.
[1] Archibald was the recipient of the 2012 Mercer Award for her co-authorship of the paper "Tree cover in sub-Saharan Africa: Rainfall and fire constrain forest and savanna as alternative stable states".
[4] Sally Archibald and one of her co-authors, Carla Staver, were the 2012 recipients of the George Mercer Award for their paper "Tree cover in sub-Saharan Africa: Rainfall and fire constrain forest and savanna as alternative stable states" which was published in Ecology in 2011.
The committee selected Archibald and Staver due to their application of ecological theory to the exploration of the feedbacks that impact global vegetation patterns.
The research added many contributions to the field of ecology including that transitions from forest to savannah along tropical latitudes result from changing fire patterns and will occur in the near future.