Researchers Focused on Climate and Global Change
Charles Agosta
Professor of Physics
Research Interests: Technology of renewable energy; lower dimensional superconductors in very high magnetic fields; dc microgrids; and heat transfer in gas boundary layers
Dana Bauer
Assistant Director of the George Perkins Marsh Institute
and Research Scientist
Research Interests: Economic and ecological theory in assessment of ecosystem services and the analysis of policies and programs that aim to protect them
Anthony Bebbington
Higgins Professor of Environment and Society
and Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Political ecology of rural change, with focus on extractive industries and socio-environmental conflicts, social movements, indigenous organizations, and livelihoods; focused on South and Central America
Denise Humphreys Bebbington
Associate Research Professor of International Development, Community, and Environment
Research Interests: Expansion of extractive industry and infrastructure development in South America, the responses of social-environmental movement organizations, and the political ecology of natural resource extraction
Rinku Roy Chowdhury
Associate Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Institutional, ecological, and spatial diversity of human-environment interactions in forest-agricultural mosaics (Mexico), urbanizing ecosystems (multiple sites in the U.S.), and coastal mangrove vulnerability to anthropogenic and climate change (the Americas and South Asia)
Timothy Downs
Associate Professor of International Development, Community, and Environment
Research Interests: Climate change impacts on science, social justice, and climate resilience; social and technical health-system innovation (community-centered); participatory local/regional sustainable development and capacity building; environmental and social justice; risk and vulnerability assessment; watershed stewardship; Latin American and rapidly industrializing countries
J. Ronald Eastman
Director of Clark Labs
and Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Geographic information systems, earth system informatics, conservation GIS, remote sensing, and cartography, with a focus on land change modeling, biodiversity conservation, machine learning, and time series analysis of earth observation data
Lyndon Estes
Associate Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Drivers and impacts of agricultural change, with a particular focus on Africa, by using new Earth observation technologies and a range of modeling techniques
Abby Frazier
Assistant Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Spatiotemporal dynamics and impacts of climate change and climate variability, using geospatial analysis to integrate diverse datasets, including models and observations, to understand the multidisciplinary impacts of climate on freshwater resources and ecosystems over regional and global scales, with a focus on Pacific Islands; climate extremes, particularly the impacts of drought and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation on local hydrology and wildfire regimes
Karen Frey
Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Combined use of field measurements, satellite remote sensing, and GIS to study large-scale linkages between land, atmosphere, ocean, and ice in polar environments; most recently, the hydrological and biogeochemical impacts of terrestrial permafrost degradation across Siberia, and the biological and biogeochemical impacts of sea ice decline in polar shelf environments
Robert Johnston
Director of the George Perkins Marsh Institute
and Professor of Economics
Research Interests: Economic valuation, benefit transfer and ecosystem services, with an emphasis on aquatic, riparian and coastal systems; recent work focused on the economics of coastal vulnerability and adaptation (e.g., to sea level rise and coastal flooding), and the coordination of economic and ecological models to value aquatic, riparian, and coastal ecosystem services
Dominik Kulakowski
Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Effects of climate, disturbances, and land use on mountain forest ecosystems in the U.S., Rocky Mountains, and in Europe; recently, the causes and consequences of forest disturbances such as fires and insect outbreaks; effects of climate on tree mortality and forest dieback; interactions and feedbacks among forest disturbances under climatic variability
James McCarthy
Director of the Graduate School of Geography
and Professor
Research Interests: Political ecology; political economy; environmental politics, policy, and governance; property; rural areas and extractive industries; social movements; and social theory, with a focus on questions of environmental governance
Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger
Associate Professor of International Development, Community, and Environment
Research Interests: Geographic Information Science, human-environment geography, and public health, using advanced techniques of spatial analysis to address a broad range of urgent social, environmental, and health issues such as adverse birth outcomes, asthma incidence, heat-related mortality, health disparities, crime and noise pollution
Robert (Gil) Pontius
Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Creating new quantitative methods for land change science and geographic information science, applied to research in the Plum Island ecosystems of Massachusetts (why humans fertilize and water their lawns, and how this influences watering bans and river pollution); in Puerto Rico (why humans transform the surface of the land, and how this influences flooding and biodiversity in San Juan); and carbon offset projects to manage greenhouse gas emissions from tropical forests
John Rogan
Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Landscape ecology, urban forestry, fire ecology, optical remote sensing; and geographic information science; recent research includes characterization of urban heat island dynamics in relation to canopy and impervious surface in Massachusetts Gateway Cities; assessment and scoping of infrastructure and extractive industries in relation to deforestation; and geographic analysis of the territorial overlap between extractive industries and livelihoods in Honduras
Morgan Ruelle
Assistant Professor of International Development, Community, and Environment
Research Interests: Indigenous ecological knowledge, human ecology, biocultural diversity, participatory action research, ethnobotany, food systems, agroecology, climate adaptation, plant phenology
Florencia Sangermano
Assistant Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Conservation biology, GIS, remote sensing, and landscape ecology, including the application of geospatial analysis and satellite remote sensing to evaluate changes in the earth system, and to assess their effect on ecosystems and biodiversity
Magda Tsaneva
Associate Professor of Economics
Research Interests: Applied microeconomics with a focus on development economics, including how government policies and unexpected shocks impact mental health, early marriage/pregnancy, and child education
Christopher A. Williams
Director of the Biogeosciences Research Group
Director of Environmental Sciences
and Professor of Geography
Research Interests: Terrestrial ecosystem ecology; land surface hydrology; land-atmosphere interactions; ecosystem-climate interactions; global environmental change; energy-water-carbon exchanges; ecohydrology