Community-engaged research and practice

We work with communities, practitioners, and policymakers responding to climate and global change. Our integrated research and expertise around economic, environmental, and societal issues help inform decision-making in government, business, industry, and non-profits here and abroad.

Mexico’s water crisis

Tim Downs, an expert in environmental science and engineering, works with a team of interdisciplinary faculty on a three-year NSF-funded study bringing a multi-pronged approach to climate impacts in Mexico.

Building partnerships

Rainforest biodiversity

As part of a global research team working alongside Indigenous communities, geographer Florencia Sangermano brought her expertise in GIS and eco-acoustics from Massachusetts to the Amazon as part of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition.

Listening to the Amazon

Resilience in Ethiopia

Morgan Ruelle leads research to determine whether Ethiopian farmers’ traditional practice of planting and harvesting multi-species grain mixtures could offer climate-resilient solutions to global food insecurity.

Going with the grains

Pacific islands’ future

Lead author of the Fifth National Climate Assessment’s Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands chapter, climatologist Abby Frazier explores the physical and socioeconomic impacts on communities hit by multiplying climate disasters.

An ocean of impacts

Warming Arctic

Since 2011, polar scientist Karen Frey has led a chapter in NOAA’s annual Arctic Report Card. She is vice chair of the International Arctic Science Committee’s Marine Working Group and member of National Academies/National Research Council committees.

Looking at the science

Climate science meets AI

Working with NASA and IBM, Hamed Alemohammad, director of Clark’s Center for Geospatial Analytics, and his team have produced the world’s first geospatial AI foundation model, a milestone that will allow scientists to access and study data more quickly and efficiently.

Harnessing data

Where trees help

Geographer Christopher Williams and his team inform decision makers about where we get the greatest climate benefit from retaining and expanding tree cover throughout the world. He has co-chaired the North American Carbon Program’s science leadership group.

Identifying gaps

The value of water

Economists Robert Johnston and Dana Bauer are involved with two parallel, federally funded grants, one involving water quality in a polluted watershed and the other studying water quantity in a farming area facing severe drought.

Costs and benefits

A world of migrants

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Anita Fábos works with migrants and refugees both locally and globally and examines the impacts of climate change on migration to urban areas.

Human impacts

Our HEROes

Public trees have higher survivorship than ones planted on private land, and street trees in particular lived longer.

HERO still super