Heterogeneous Impacts and Implications
Strives to evaluate the heterogeneous ecological, political, economic, and ethical impacts of climate change and climate change policies, and the ways in which those unevenly distributed impacts intersect and generate feedbacks in both human and natural systems at global and regional scales
- How will the physical, biological, engineering and social systems of various world regions adapt to climate change in the next century?
- How do different allocations of greenhouse gas emissions affect emissions trading policy design and adoption?
- What are the equity implications of heterogeneous patterns of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts?
- What will be the economic implications of changes in regional climates, and how are they distributed across space, time and economic strata?
- How do heterogeneous economic impacts affect policy options and vice versa?
- What are the relationships and feedbacks between sub-national scale variations in climate change impacts and mitigation/adaptation policies
The distribution of causes and effects of climate change are important ecologically, politically, economically and socially. Improved understanding of the regional impacts of climate change will be important to better inform mitigation and adaptation efforts, as well as informing differential social and policy responses. Improved understanding of the political and economic effects of different distributions of greenhouse gas emissions, both de facto and as allocated by law or treaty, will help with the design and implementation of more effective climate change mitigation policies.
The Collaborative O-Buoy Project: Deployment of a Network of Arctic Ocean Chemical Sensors for the IPY and Beyond - Paul Shepson (Funding from NSF)
The Arctic Ocean is a rapidly changing and hostile environment: remote and, at times, inaccessible; air temperatures as low as -50oC; months of darkness; a sea ice cover that is constantly moving and deforming; pervasive moisture during the melt season; drifting snow and marauding mammals. These conditions make any observation difficult, but pose particular difficulties for autonomous sensors.
A Multiphase Study of the Nature, Sources, and Fate of Atmospheric Organic Nitrogen - Paul Shepson (Funding from the National Science Foundation)
This project addresses the sources, fate, and importance of atmospheric organic nitrates, and the role of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) in sequestering atmospheric nitrogen in forest environments. This research is important in the broader context of understanding forest uptake of carbon dioxide, including future changes as climate and anthropogenic inputs of atmospheric nitrogen change.
Forest structure and biodiversity on a steep geophysical gradient: the cloud forest lee margin - Kerry Rabenold (Funding from NASA)
Tropical montane cloud forests are central elements of the complex of montane environments that lie at the core of most tropical biodiversity hotspots.
Natural Capital and Poverty Reduction - Gerald Shively (Funding from the US Agency for International Development)
This project will be carried out in collaboration with researchers at Oregon State University, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the University of Malawi, and Makerere University in Uganda.