Research Director's Welcome

December, 2016

The second half of 2016 provided a remarkable end to a remarkable year! As of October, the Earth was on
pace to have the warmest year on record globally since modern record keeping began in 1880, with 15 of
the 16 previous warmest years, all since 2001. Global atmospheric CO2 concentrations continued to rise,
and crossed the 400ppm threshold. New analyses of 2015 revealed that the dramatic increase that year was
primarily due to declining carbon sinks, as opposed to increased human emissions, signaling potentially
dangerous feedbacks from the Earth system due to heat and drought. Internationally, efforts accelerated to
address climate change, biodiversity loss, and other sustainable development goals, while major political
changes in the U.S. and abroad brought major new uncertainties for future carbon emissions, environmental
policy, and relevant research. In this dynamic context, the department of GEOG has stayed extremely
active, productive, and out in front. In the second half of the year alone, new research grants were selected
across a diverse range of topics and scales including: the role of land cover / land use in malaria
transmission in Myanmar (Loboda, Stewart, Silva), resilience options for climate vulnerable Africa (Brown), a
cropland carbon monitoring system for U.S. (Izzaraulde, Bandaru), and consistent long term land climate
data records from satellites (Roger, Franch, Vermote).

New papers described the effects of future urban expansion on fertile cropland (Baiocchi), the accuracy of
long term forest cover change data records (Feng, Sexton, Townshend), and future scenarios for global
climate change and related international efforts to study the effects of land-use change on climate (Hurtt).
PhD students lead papers on stand-age dynamics in Siberian Larch forests (Cheng, Loboda, Krylov,
Potapov), mapping cropland burned area in Russia (Hall, Loboda, Giglio), and potential future vegetation
and carbon redistribution in North America in response to climate change (Flanagan). In outreach, Nature
published an article featuring one of our own (Hansen) leading the near real time monitoring of global
deforestation. Much of this work was presented at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall meeting, in
over 34 first author presentations, and convening roles in 9 sessions. Notably, 8 of our faculty were
recognized at the 18th Annual University-Wide Research Leaders Luncheon (Hansen, Huang, Hurtt,
Izaurralde, Justice, Kasischke, Loboda, Potapov).

Dr. George C. Hurtt

Professor and Research Director