Current Research Projects

The Marsh Institute draws on expertise from the social, natural, and technical sciences to conduct multidisciplinary, integrated research programs, both nationally and internationally. Its studies typically represent the interactions in various ways of humans and the environment. Many diverse themes exist. The following are some of the Institute's current projects, listed alphabetically by principal investigator.

The following are some of the Institute's current projects, listed alphabetically by principal investigator:

The Global Shift in R&D Alliances: Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and the Quest for the 'Base of the Pyramid' (BOP) Markets
Principal Investigators: Yuko Aoyama, Clark University and Balaji Parthasarathy, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

In this proposed research, we examine how MNEs are devising new ways to access market intelligence by forging alliances with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and develop cases studies of organizational innovation in emerging economies. In particular, we focus on the emerging phenomenon of R&D alliances between MNEs and NGOs, and analyze the significance of global corporate R&D activities in five metropolitan areas in India. In understanding the process and organizational dynamics of innovative activities that target BOP markets, we aim to develop a new conceptual framework that explicitly recognizes innovation as interactions between technological knowledge and market intelligence. Furthermore the NGOs' new role as partners in innovation demands a broader understanding of their role in shaping the behavior of MNEs. How MNEs and NGOs co-innovate, co-develop and nurture knowledge assets, in spite of competing incentive structures, institutional objectives, and organizational cultures, require not only new solutions to multi-dimensional coordination problems, but a new conceptual framework of possibly a new form of market governance. Emerging collaborations between for-profit and non-profit entities in seeking market intelligence for BOP on innovation will provide new theoretical insights and empirical evidence into the emerging trends in capitalism and development, and contributes to broader debates on the transformation of, and the heterogeneity of capitalism(s). Through this international collaborative effort between institutions in the USA and in India, we aim at fostering an intellectual dialog among academics in the two countries on the involvement of global forces in shaping the future of the Indian economy.

Extractive Industry, Decentralization and Development: An Andean Comparative Study
Principal Investigator: Anthony Bebbington
Funding Agency: Ford Foundation

The goal of this project is to enhance knowledge of the ways in which political and institutional regimes affect the extent, nature and distribution of development opportunities catalysed by the growth of extractive industries (EIs). This will be achieved through a comparison of Peru and Bolivia, and of the different taxation and redistributive regimes for hard rock mining and hydrocarbons in the two countries. The first part of the research will trace the ways in which distinct taxation and revenue distribution regimes have emerged for these two sectors in each of the countries – this analysis will allow us to address the hypothesis that the dominant regimes for a particular extractive commodity are influenced by the institutional and political context in which the regimes initially emerged and that, once codified, these tax and redistribution regimes become difficult to change. The second part of the research will focus on the contemporary period and compare the relationships between EI taxation, expenditure and the distribution of development opportunities under the market friendly regime of Peru and the post-neoliberal regime of Bolivia. In each country, the project will assess the following measures of development opportunity related to extractive industry: the allocation of extractive rents between private capital and government; the geographical distribution of negative development impacts, especially in the form of environmental externalities; the geographical distribution of the rents that accrue to government; and the ways in which these rents are spent.

Extractives Industries, Conflict and the Possibilities of Development in the Andes
Principal Investigator: Anthony Bebbington
Funding Agency: Ford Foundation

This project will generate new knowledge regarding the relationships between socio-environmental conflict, extractive industry and sub-national development by focusing on the relationships between conflict and institutional innovation in the Andean-Amazonian region. By "institutional innovation" we refer to changes in practices, rules, regulations and arrangements for enforcement that show signs of long-lastingness and that exist in practice and not merely on paper. We will document innovations that appear to enhance synergy between extraction and development and prevent significant environmental damage, as well as those institutional changes that have caused further conflict. The hypotheses that underlie the project are that: under certain conditions, social conflict can be a potent source of institutional innovation; that this potential channel of institutional innovation is poorly understood because conflict is viewed as a problem to be managed; and that a more constructive view will open up new ways of responding to conflict that increase its propensity to facilitate institutional changes that, in turn, will increase synergies between extraction and sub-national development that are recognized by a range of actors.

The project will conduct national inventories of sub-national institutional innovations that have emerged in areas affected by conflicts around mining and hydrocarbon extraction. These inventories will then help select between three and five sub-national cases to be studied in depth, in order to understand the full range of conditions that favour the emergence of institutional innovations in the presence of conflict. This research material will be used as a basis for preparing briefing documents for the press, public authorities (state and indigenous), companies and civil society bodies, as well as for discussion meetings to be arranged with these different actors. Beyond the creation of new knowledge (which is the primary goal), the project seeks to project and debate this knowledge so that it contributes to attitudinal and ultimately strategic changes in the ways in which extractive industry conflict is viewed and handled.

The project will be implemented in Peru (with a particular focus on the South), Bolivia and Ecuador by a team of partner organizations. The lead organization is Clark University (where the PI is Professor Anthony Bebbington), and the lead partner is the Peruvian Centre for Social Studies (CEPES). Other partners include the Centro de Estudios Regionales para el Desarrollo de Tarija (CER-DET, Bolivia), Grupo Propuesta Ciudadana (Peru) and analysts based in Cuenca (Ecuador). The project also collaborates with and builds on the PI's earlier work on the political ecology of extractive industries and will use the already successful web platform built for that project www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/andes (also accessible at www.cepes.org.pe).

Sustaining Coastal Landscapes and Community Benefits: Developing an Interdisciplinary Model for Enhancing the Impact of NERRS Science
Principal Investigators: Verna DeLauer and Robert Johnston
Funding agency: National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) System Science Collaborative

This proposal develops an innovative model for interdisciplinary research to build capacity within the NERR system. It enhances the impact of NERRS science by applying an ecosystem based management approach to address complex land use challenges and facilitate dialogue and policy deliberation about ecosystem service tradeoffs. residents, managers and stakeholder groups often engage in riparian and other land use decisions that are not in the long-term best interest of the public, because they do not have the information required to accurately consider tradeoffs between the benefits/costs of development and associated losses of ecosystem services. This lack of information persists despite the rich ecological data available within NERRS and elsewhere, because these data have been thus far poorly linked to (1) social science models required to characterize and quantify tradeoffs in ecosystem service benefits and (2) methods to translate results for effective policy guidance. The goal of the proposed project is to provide information on ecosystem service tradeoffs and values in a concrete, useful format, and to use this information in coordination with Wells NERR stakeholder groups to promote sustainable management of riparian land use and habitat.

Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership (PREP): Local Decision-Makers' Conceptualizations of Municipal Water Resource Management
Principal Investigator: Verna DeLauer
Funding agency: Mosakowski Institute at Clark University

Researchers from Clark University and Brown University conducted a small study of selected local decision-makers in the PREP study area. The goals of the study were three-fold: (1) To identify PREP's communication goals related to municipal water resource management. (2) To capture perceptions of and justifications by select decision-makers when making decisions about the linkages between land use and water quality. (3) To offer recommendations to PREP for more relevant and targeted science communication messages with the intent of changing misperceptions and filling gaps in knowledge that might otherwise lead to environmentally unsustainable management practices.

Virtual citizen engagement process for the Slade's Ferry Study Area in Somerset, Massachusetts
Principal Investigators: Verna DeLauer and Justin Hollander
Funding agency: Tufts University

The Open Neighborhood Project (under the leadership of Marsh Institute Visiting Scholar Justin Hollander) has been a leading organization in exploring and experimenting with innovative approaches to improving citizen participation in urban planning. Based in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, Open Neighborhood has collaborated with non-profit organizations and government agencies to test new strategies for effective community engagement. Open Neighborhood worked with the Southeastern Regional Planning & Economic Development District (SRPEDD) and the Town of Somerset, MA to design and implement an engagement process around Slade's Ferry Crossing that could be studied and examined for its utility. The Slade's Ferry Project employed innovative ways of soliciting citizen input and participation in determining the future of the built and natural environment in the study area. Citizens unable to attend meetings could still engage in their town planning at home or at a nearby library or Internet café through the use of computer program(s) that create virtual environments, as platforms for introducing architectural, natural resources, and urban design and planning materials specific to Slade's Ferry in Somerset, Massachusetts. The goal of the engagement process was to broaden public involvement, through an intense public outreach process and using innovative computer programs to captured public feedback electronically as well as through in-person public meetings based on these 3-D models.

Indicators for Ecosystem Health in New England
Principal Investigator: Verna DeLauer
Initial Funding for Project from Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

More than 50 representatives from northeastern (from Long Island Sound to the Gulf of Maine) monitoring, indicator, and resource management programs are working collaboratively to create an Northeast Indicator Community of Practice to share indicator communication methods, lessons learned regarding end-user satisfaction of indicators and impacts on planning, policy and management decisions, and explore strategies for improved short and long-term indicator program collaboration.

Estimating Sustainable Limits of Incidental Mortality for Data-poor Marine Wildlife
Principal Investigator: Peter Dillingham
Funding Agency: Lenfest Ocean Program

Incidental (bycatch) mortality by fisheries is one of the most serious conservation concerns for non-target populations of marine megafauna such as marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles, sharks, and other large marine species worldwide. For many of these populations, data limitations and lack of appropriate quantitative tools hinder decision-making. Clark University researcher Peter Dillingham and co-investigators Jeff Moore (NOAA), Rebecca Lewison (San Diego State University), and Alexandra Curtis (Acadia University), along with an international working group of scientists and policy experts, will develop analytical decision tools for setting take limits to help guide decision-makers. These tools will make fundamental improvements in the consistency and quality of processes by which incidental impacts on marine wildlife are assessed and managed, and are a critical step in appropriate management of these species.

National Children's Study
Co-Principal Investigators: Timothy Downs and Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger
Funding Agency: National Institute of Health

Clark University researchers Tim Downs, Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, Octavia Taylor and Rob Goble from the Marsh Institute and International Development, Community, and Environment (IDCE) are partnering with the University of Massachusetts Medical School based on a competitive contract awarded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for participation in the landmark National Children's Study. This study is the largest to be conducted in the United States to assess the effects of environmental and genetic factors in children's health. The Clark team brings expertise in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), environmental sampling and community-based participatory research.

Collaborative Research: A Workshop to Draft the Implementation Plan for the Arctic in Rapid Transition (ART) Initiative - Winnipeg, October 2010
Co-Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

The goal of the Arctic in Rapid Transition (ART) Initiative is to better understand multifaceted climate processes across the land-ocean-atmosphere system. The Initiative began in response to the last International Conference on Arctic Research Planning (ICARP), which identified the need for synthesis activities across Arctic system science. Subsequently, the ART program was established and has two phases. The first phase was completed in early 2010 with the drafting of a science plan that was the product of a three day workshop hosted at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, Alaska. The workshop brought together more than 50 scientists from nine counties to outline the priorities to be considered within the ART Initiative. The science plan was presented to the Arctic Ocean Science Board (AOSB) and endorsed by the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) during their annual meeting in Nuuk, Greenland. With the science plan written, vetted and endorsed by the broader Arctic science community phase two of the Initiative can now begin. A workshop will be held at the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg Canada from October 18 - 20th to draft an implementation plan based on the research priorities identified in the science plan. The implementation plan will focus on linkages within the marine system, including contributions from land-ocean gateways, shelf seas, and the deep ocean. A range of time scales will also be explored, from Paleoclimates to the rapid change currently being observed in the Arctic. As with the science plan, the implementation effort will be organized and executed almost entirely by early career scientists from five different nations (U.S., Canada, Norway, Germany, and Sweden) making the ART Initiative a unique international effort.

An Interdisciplinary Study of Recent Ice Sheet Melt, Sea Ice Decline and Enhanced Ocean Biological Productivity Along the Amundsen Coast, West Antarctica
Co-Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: NASA Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science Program

Frey is a co-PI on the 3-year $707,112 grant, collaborating with Dr. Sarah Das at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Dr. Matthew Evans at Wheaton College. This research is an interdisciplinary effort to understand the relationships between ocean and ice sheet conditions in the climatically sensitive region surrounding the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This sector is one of the most rapidly changing and least understood of all the polar regions, and alone is experiencing a mass loss of ice at rates comparable to the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. Frey's Ph.D. student Luke Trusel will travel to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in December 2010 for a six-week field mission in support of this NASA project.

The Polaris Project II: Amplifying the Impact
Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

The Polaris Project II seeks to amplify the impact of Polaris I (now in its third and final year) through its extension, expansion, and enhancement. The three overarching objectives of Polaris II are to 1) train the next generation of arctic researchers, 2) advance scientific understanding of the Arctic, and 3) expand public awareness of the feedbacks between the Arctic and the global climate system. These objectives will be accomplished through a multi-faceted effort that includes a summer field course/research experience in the Siberian Arctic, a series of on-campus arctic-focused courses, and a wide range of outreach activities. While undergraduate students remain the primary focus of Polaris II, participation in the annual field course will be expanded to include a K-12 teacher, graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, and visiting faculty member each year. Outreach activities will target K-12 students and teachers, undergraduate students and faculty, and a diverse public audience.

The unifying scientific theme of the Polaris Project is the transport and transformation of carbon and nutrients as they move with water from terrestrial uplands to the Arctic Ocean. Research conducted by the interdisciplinary Polaris Project team of faculty and students will make fundamental contributions to the scientific understanding of this topic, a central issue in arctic system science. While continued scientific advances are essential for arctic system understanding, prediction, and protection, tackling the climate change challenge is also a matter of education. Polaris II offers a unique experience in undergraduate research that will inspire and prepare a new generation of arctic researchers. Further, it will convey the importance of the Arctic to the public and to policy-makers, providing them with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.

Collaborative Research: Toward a Circumarctic Lakes Observation Network (CALON)
Co-Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

The scientific goals and methods that address the intellectual merits of the research are: (1) Expand on existing lake monitoring sites in northern Alaska by developing a network of regionally representative lakes along environmental gradients from which we will collect baseline data to assess current physical, chemical, and biological lake characteristics. This will allow the project scientists to make spatial and temporal comparisons to determine the impact of warmer temperatures, changing cloud cover and precipitation patterns, permafrost degradation, and direct human impacts on lakes; (2) Implement a multiscale (hierarchical) lake instrumentation scheme such that basic data is collected from 51 lakes, while a subset of lakes are more intensively instrumented; (3) Provide regional scaling and extrapolation of key metrics through calibration and validation of satellite imagery with ground measurements; and (4) Develop and implement standardized protocols to enable inter-site comparison and to prepare for expansion towards a pan-Arctic network. The education/outreach goals that address the broader impacts of the research outlined above are: (1) Incorporate indigenous observations of lake physical and biological characteristics and changes. Innovative interactive methods of sharing information will be developed and made available through native and local organizations. Scientific and technical training will be provided to Iñupiat students for monitoring lake and drinking water quality; (2) Develop a demonstration monitoring network based on the Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) architecture and link this network to research centers, indigenous communities, and other power- and connectivity-challenged environments; (3) Develop and refine data management, visualization, and archiving activities with A-CADIS; and (4) Provide an introduction to Arctic science for several beginning investigators.

Collaborative Research: Pacific-Arctic Carbon Synthesis - Transformations, Fluxes, and Budgets
Co-Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

Predicting future conditions of the Arctic Ocean system requires scientific knowledge of its present status as well as a process-based understanding of the mechanisms of change. This research effort will synthesize a number of recent, upcoming, and historical datasets to create three regional carbon budgets for the Chukchi/western Beaufort Sea, the Bering Sea, and the northern Gulf of Alaska. As waters from the North Pacific make their way through these regions a number of transformations occur that modify them before they enter the central Arctic Ocean. In general, the waters exiting these shelf seas are fresher, colder, and have lower pH due to the uptake of CO₂ and the remineralization of organic matter. Because of the importance that biogeochemical transformations have in preconditioning the waters of the central Arctic and ultimately parts of the North Atlantic it is important to gain a better understanding of how these processes impact the carbon biogeochemistry of the region. The investigators propose to address this issue by better constraining the carbon budgets for three zones in the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean including coastal fluxes, rates of primary production and air-sea exchange of CO₂ as well as developing algorithms with predictive capabilities for carbonate mineral saturation states. The aim of this effort is to determine how physical forcing and biological responses control the marine carbon cycle including the rates of air-sea CO₂ exchange and net community production as well as ocean acidification effects in the contrasting shelf environments, and to better constrain the present stocks and fluxes of carbon and determine how climate change will affect the regional carbon cycle. The project will support four early career investigators, a postdoctoral scientist, and a Ph.D. student.

The Potential Impacts of Sea Ice Decline and River Discharge Shifts on Biological Productivity in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas
Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: NASA

Continued climate warming in the Arctic will likely have profound consequences for many systems throughout the region, including declines in sea ice cover and shifts in the quantity and quality of river discharge. It is widely expected that these changes in sea ice cover and river discharge will in turn have significant impacts on ecosystem productivity in arctic shelf seas, with globally significant consequences for carbon cycling and food web dynamics. We focus our proposed field efforts on the Chukchi/Beaufort Sea region, which is a critical crossroads for the Arctic. Not only is this region a globally important marine mammal migration pathway, but the Pacific water transiting the system is one of the largest point sources of nutrients, heat and freshwater to the Arctic Ocean. Furthermore, although adjacent, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas exhibit significantly different environmental characteristics, which will enable a better understanding of the interplay between sea ice decline, dissolved organic matter, non-algal particles, and light transmission in influencing biological productivity. In addition to focusing on the influence of river discharge, we will investigate how the timing of sea ice breakup and chlorophyll biomass production influences the strength of pelagic-benthic coupling, providing a unique opportunity to utilize upper ocean parameters that are able to be remotely sensed by satellites (e.g., sea ice and upper ocean phytoplankton variability) to give direct and critical insight into the spatial and temporal variability of benthic ecosystem dynamics in arctic shelf seas.

Comparison of Carcinogenic Potencies in Animals and Humans: Pilot Project for Developing and Validating Methodology
Principal Investigator: Dale Hattis
Funding Agency: Subcontract with ICF under EPA Prime Award

First, we have been developing a specific example of the practical use of the idea that exposures to toxic substances often can be expected to exert their effects in ways that effectively add to "background" pathological processes in the human population. The specific example we are using for this case is that toxic exposures, such as cigarette smoking can depress birth weights and cause corresponding increases in adverse effects associated with reduced birth weight, such as infant mortality and delayed neurological development.

Second, we have been exploring the use of innovative "Nexgen" in vitro assays of toxic effects as a substitute for in vivo animal testing for developing preliminary risk assessments for the many chemicals that have not yet been the subjects of conventional toxicology studies. Our initial results indicate, unfortunately, that when examined using a battery of over 300 example chemicals, there is as yet a poor correlation between the in vitro doses that induce detectable responses and more traditional measures of in vitro potency for producing the most common types of adverse effects. Based on this comparison we develop suggestions for improving the battery of in vitro tests used to specifically measure effects on communication among, rather than within key cell types (such as neurons), and interpreting the results of some in vitro tests differently than simply as a proxy for in vitro potency.

Risk Analysis for Developmental Effects of Chlorpyrifos
Principal Investigator: Dale Hattis and Rob Goble
Funding Agency: Environmental Protection Agency

The primary goal is to use PBPK modeling to help derive a developmental Reference Dose (RfD) for Chlorpyrifos (CPF). Other parts of the project will evaluate the internal dose-response for adverse effects in developmental and mechanistic toxicity studies in rodents for comparison with humans; use the PBPK modeling approaches to assess population exposures and risk from CPF, based on NHANES general population measurements of a specific CPF urinary metabolite; and develop more general recommendations for the collection and interpretation of dynamically changing biomarker measurements for health risk assessment modeling.

Research Conference: Integrated Economic Analysis of Ecosystem Services for Agricultural and Rural Sustainability
Principal Investigator: Robert J. Johnston
Funding Agency: National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI)

Following the model of prior Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association (NAREA) workshops, the proposed workshop on Integrated Economic Analysis of Ecosystem Services for Agricultural and Rural Sustainability will convene experts at the forefront of economic modeling, quantification and valuation of agro-ecosystem services. The conference responds to FY2011 Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities, Environment program area priorities (A1651). It is proposed for June 12-13 in Lowell, Massachusetts, immediately following the NAREA Annual Meeting. The workshop will advance research on the frontier of economic analysis of agro-ecosystem services, with an emphasis on (a) the broad array of often unrecognized ecosystem services that US agriculture both provides and relies upon; (b) empirical research and rigorous interdisciplinary coordination; (c) interactions among externalities, market failures, incentives facing farmers and the rural public, and consequences for agricultural sustainability; and (d) implications for ecosystem service markets and payments. Invited speakers represent leading economists in the development of approaches to model, quantify and value ecosystem services, and in the design of associated markets. Joining these experts will be established and emerging scholars selected based on the quality, relevance and innovativeness of their work. The emphasis on interdisciplinary methods and empirical economic analysis stands in contrast to prior ecosystem services conferences which have emphasized broad concepts and work by often isolated natural science disciplines. In addition to advancing the research frontier, the workshop will produce a formal research agenda, a special issue of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, and an edited manuscript for a broad policy audience.

Long-Term Health Effects, Risk/Risk Perceptions, and Implications for Agricultural Product Markets: Modeling Consumption Patterns for Aquacultured Seafood
Principal Investigator: Robert J. Johnston
Funding Agency: USDA/AFRI

Inaccurate perceptions regarding health risks and benefits of farmed seafood consumption have led to consumption patterns that do not reflect accurate risk/benefit tradeoffs. The proposed project, overseen by Professor Robert J. Johnston together with partners from the University of Rhode Island, coordinates previously detached methods to promote a comprehensive perspective on the role of long-term health tradeoffs for seafood demand. The effort will combine purchase diary, consumer survey, and qualitative data with consumer choice and risk perception models to estimate relationships among: (1) consumer perceptions/attitudes towards health risk tradeoffs in farmed seafood consumption, (2) the type, quantity and presentation of risk information, and (3) consumer preference and product choice. Outputs will include guidance regarding the use of risk communication to encourage farmed seafood consumption that reflects accurate risk/benefit trade-offs and enhances both consumer and producer welfare. Although the proposed work targets aquaculture products, the relevance of methodological contributions spans a wide spectrum of potential applications to agricultural and non-agricultural products.

Wildfire and Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreaks in Subalpine Forrests
Principal Investigator: Dominik Kulakowski
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

Cascading events, such as wildfires and bark beetle outbreaks in western North America, which initiate in small areas and propagate nonlinearly over time and space to affect large areas appear to be increasing under global warming (Logan et al. 2005, Hicke et al. 2006, Westerling et al. 2006, Peters et al. 2007). Potentially, weather induced increases in susceptibility of host trees to insect attack followed by extensive tree mortality will feedback positively into fuel conditions conducive to more widespread fire (Agee 1993, Harvey 1994). In the context of climate warming and ecological forecasting (Ayres and Lombardo 2000; Clark et al. 2001; Dale et al. 2001; Scheffer & Carpenter 2003; Peters et al. 2007), the study of feedbacks between wildfire and bark beetle outbreaks poses important challenges and opportunities in advancing ecological understanding of cross scale, non linear disturbance interactions across large forested landscapes in the western U.S.

Legalizing Community: Lawyers and Citizen Activism in Neighborhood Disputes
Principal Investigator: Deborah Martin
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

This project will explore the interactions of citizen groups and lawyers in place-based disputing. The proposed research will expose the connections between legal practices and land-use outcomes. It will aid policy-makers, lawyers, social service providers and community groups in their efforts to mediate land use conflicts and to realize less contentious resolutions.

RCN-SEES: Sustainable Energy Systems
Co-Investigator: Abigail Mechtenberg
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

This award is funded under NSF's Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) activities, which aim to address the challenges of creating a sustainable world. This Research Coordination Network (RCN) sustainable energy project brings together a multidisciplinary team including U.S. academics from Arizona State University, Northeastern University, Clark University and Rochester Institute of Technology, together with academics from Cardiff University (U.K) and Mountains of the Moon and Makerere Universities (Uganda) as well as researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Based on concepts of strong and weak ties, the network will build ties among stakeholders for sustainable energy systems with subgroups focused on 1) innovations in energy technologies, 2) sustainability implications of manufacture, use and end-of-life at scale, and 3) energy and human development. Ties between and within groups will be developed through industrial, government and developing country residencies through which graduate students acquire tacit knowledge necessary to bridge various stages of the innovation system. This project develops knowledge and the human capital necessary for sustainable energy systems as well as mechanisms for interdisciplinary training necessary in a variety of technical domains.

The Role of Information-Communication Technologies in Enterprise Development and Industrial Change in Africa: Evidence from South Africa and Tanzania
Principal Investigator: James Murphy
Funding Source: NSF - Geography and Spatial Sciences and Science, Technology, and Society Programs

This project, conducted in collaboration with Padraig Carmody at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, seeks to understand if and how information and communication technologies (ICTs) might enable African enterprises to become more profitably and progressively integrated into global markets. The changing structure of international trade offers significant opportunities for African firms and some believe that ICTs can rapidly accelerate Africa's global market integration by helping small, medium, and micro-scale enterprises (SMMEs) become significantly more productive, innovative, and competitive. While there is general agreement about ICTs' importance, substantive questions remain regarding if and how they can dramatically improve SMME performance and whether investments in these should take precedence over other development needs (e.g., roads, public health, education). The project will address questions about ICTs and their significance through an in-depth examination of 'if' and 'how' mobile phone, computer, and internet use are influencing SMME development in South Africa and Tanzania's tourism and wood products industries. The study will yield findings that contribute significantly to theories of technological change and industrial development, will help policy makers more effectively target and weigh ICT investments against other development priorities, and will improve our understandings of what ICTs mean for the everyday lives of Africans. The project will also have significant educational impacts as research assistants and students in Ireland, the USA, South Africa, and Tanzania are supported and trained throughout its duration.

Collaborative Research: Ecological Homogenization of Urban America
Principal Investigator at Clark University: Colin Polsky
Collaborative Principal Investigators: Peter Groffman (Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies), Morgan Grove (USDA Forest Service), Sarah Hobbie, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Kristen Nelson (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities), Sharon Hall, Kelli Larson (Arizona State University), James Hefferman, Laura Ogden (Florida International University), Christopher Neill (Marine Biological Laboratory), Diane Pataki (University of California-Irvine), and Rinku Roy Chowdhury (Indiana University)
Funding Source: National Science Foundation

Urban, suburban and exurban environments are important ecosystems and their extent is increasing in the U.S. The conversion of wild or managed ecosystems to urban ecosystems is resulting in ecosystem homogenization across cities, where neighborhoods in very different parts of the country have similar patterns of roads, residential lots, commercial areas and aquatic features. Funds are provided to test the hypothesis that this homogenization alters ecological structure and functions relevant to ecosystem carbon and nitrogen dynamics, with continental scale implications. The research will provide a framework for understanding the impacts of urban land use change from local to continental scales. The research encompasses datasets ranging from household surveys to regional-scale remote sensing across six metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) that cover the major climatic regions of the US (Phoenix, AZ, Miami, FL, Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, St. Paul, MN and Los Angeles, CA) to determine how household characteristics correlate with landscaping decisions, land management practices and ecological structure and functions at local, regional and continental scales. This research will transform scientific understanding of an important and increasingly common ecosystem type (?suburbia?) and the consequences to carbon storage and nitrogen pollution at multiple scales. In addition, it will advance understanding of how humans perceive, value and manage their surroundings. The award will leverage an extensive, multi-scale program of education and outreach associated with ongoing LTER and/or ULTRA-EX projects. Activities include K-12 education and outreach to community groups, city/regional planners, natural history museums, state and local agencies and non-governmental organizations. Graduate students will participate in a Distributed Graduate Seminar in Sustainability Science (DGSS) initiated by NCEAS and the University of Minnesota Institute on Environment.

Pathways for Reducing the Vulnerability of Water Resources to Climate Change and Urbanization Through Land-use Planning: Comparisons Across Portland and Phoenix Metropolitan Areas
Principal Investigator: Colin Polsky
Funding Source: Subcontract with Portland State University, under NOAA Prime Award

Water resource management and land planning in major metropolitan areas of the United States provide a unique opportunity to examine the interactions between climate and society. With different climates but similar trends in population growth and increasing economic activity, metropolitan Portland and Phoenix are becoming increasingly vulnerable to future climate variability and change. Our research aims to assess the utility of climate information and land-use patterns for understanding water demand amidst climate variability and urbanization. Water demand is strongly linked to land-use patterns because a substantial amount of municipal water use is devoted to outdoor use (60 to 75% in Phoenix, 35 to 45% in Portland). This program uses research and outreach linking weather and climate information to land use and water consumption patterns, with the ultimate goal of developing strategies to adapt proactively to the uncertainties of climate change.

REU Site: Land Change and Vulnerability Studies in New England: The Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO)
Principal Investigator: Colin Polsky
Associate Director: Verna DeLauer
Funding Source: National Science Foundation

Human alterations of the earth's surface represent one of the planet's most significant cumulative global environmental changes. In countries such as the US this process manifests principally as suburbanization. Our understanding of the specific causes and consequences of suburbanization--an under-studied form of landscape change--is limited because we also lack a systematic baseline description of the location, extent, timing, and rates of the changes where the process is suspected to be important. These knowledge gaps are increasingly being filled by "land change" and "vulnerability" assessments, or the integrated studies of the process, and why it matters to stakeholders. This REU Site project will build on nine years of success engaging undergraduate researchers through the Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) program, which operates on the REU Site approach.

Two research streams are available:

• The Forest Change Monitoring stream will produce validated measures of spatial and temporal forest composition changes in a landscape (Massachusetts) dominated by heterogeneous species assemblages and ownership groups. This stream will also contribute to the "best-practices" literature for remote sensing applications, by articulating challenges and opportunities associated with constructing and maintaining a long-term, semi-automated satellite imagery-based forest monitoring program.


• The Vulnerability Assessment stream will examine the social causes and consequences of, and responses to, land-cover changes in the suburban Boston area, using remote sensing, statistical, and survey analytical techniques. Research products from both research streams will contribute to both substantive and methodological literatures on land use-environment, suburban studies, landscape ecology, and geographic information science.

Suburbanization, Water-Use, Nitrogen Cycling and Eutrophication in the 21st Century: Interactions, Feedbacks and Uncertainties in a Massachusetts Coastal Zone
Principal Investigator: Colin Polsky and Robert Pontius
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

Coastal zone suburbanization can generate environmental impacts, such as estuarine eutrophication and the impairment of shellfish beds. Suburbanization can also produce social disruptions, as established populations (and their contributions to society and the economy) are replaced by new populations/land uses. This process of transforming land cover to support suburban land uses is so multi-dimensional that few research projects have analyzed and modeled the process in a holistic manner. This research project will examine how suburbanization affects the environment within a tightly coupled analytical framework, examining questions fundamental to social, natural, and geographic information sciences. Northeastern Massachusetts is a compelling natural laboratory for examining these dynamics, because metropolitan Boston is sprawling into this coastal area. Data gathered through interviews, surveys, fieldwork, high resolution mapping/GIS, and statistical and process-based modeling will be used to characterize, explain, and model these dynamics in a suburbanizing coupled human-watershed-estuary system in a 26-town Massachusetts study area. Click here for more information:
Clark University receives $1.4 million grant for coastal zone research
NSF Awards 12 Grants for Research on Coupled Natural and Human Systems
COLIN D. POLSKY and R. GIL PONTIUS JR- Groundwater in Massachussets
Clark shares $1.4M grant to study two watersheds
Parker River's 'suburbanization' gets a closer look

Decision Center for a Desert City II: Urban Climate Adaptation
Principal Investigator: Colin Polsky
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

The scale, scope, and uncertainties associated with climate change pose formidable challenges for scientists, policy makers, and citizens. Cities in arid locales around the world urgently need integrative research with a long-term perspective to provide a sound scientific basis for policy making to improve adaptive capacity in the face of climate change. The Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC), which initially was established in 2004, is a boundary organization at the interface of science and policy that advances the scientific basis for water management decision making in the face of climatic uncertainty in the Phoenix metropolitan area of Arizona. This collaborative group will use additional funding to expand its already extensive interaction with the policy-making community, thus improving links between scientific knowledge and action. The investigators will develop fundamental new knowledge about decision making under uncertainty from three perspectives: climatic uncertainties, urban-system impacts, and adaptation decisions. As a boundary organization, DCDC scientists will use social science principles to develop and test a more integrated decision-support process for policy making in this complex environment. They will examine the interconnected water, energy, and land-use decisions that exist in a complex dynamic urban system under climate change. The previously developed DCDC WaterSim model will be refined to capture the scale dynamics, economic feedbacks, and distributional effects associated with climate-change decisions in the face of climate uncertainty. The DCDC collaborative group will work closely with the NSF-funded Central Arizona Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project to measure, monitor, and model tradeoffs among ecosystem services, social equity, and economic well-being.

DCDC research will produce new knowledge about individual and societal responses to climate change and the best practices for linking science and decision making to improve outcomes. New knowledge about urban-system dynamics will provide a better scientific basis for adaptation strategies to make cities less climate-sensitive, while new knowledge about effective approaches to decision making in the face of long-term environmental risk will aid in formulating approaches to developing and implementing these strategies. DCDC research will link knowledge about water supply and demand under current and future climate conditions with social science research on decision making, thereby providing an improved basis for scientists, policy makers, and other stakeholders to collaborate and to create and evaluate approaches to adaption in the face of climate change. The DCDC educational program will help educate and train the next generation of scholars who can move easily between the worlds of science and policy to improve society's ability to adapt to a changing climate. This collaborative group project is supported by the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences through its Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU) competition.

Plum Island Ecosystems LTER
Principal Investigator: R. Gil Pontius
Funding Agency: Subcontract with Marine Biological Laboratory, under NSF Prime Award

This is an integrated research, education and outreach program to understand the long-term interactions between human and natural systems at a land-sea interface. Integration of social science and environmental biology is crucial to understand how multiple stressors affect the sustainability of ecosystems. We study how changes in management decisions and ecological systems influence, and are influenced by, organic matter and nutrient biogeochemistry.

Action Research on a Collaborative, Multi-pronged Approach to Prevent and Reduce Youth and Gang Violence in Worcester, MA
Principal Investigator: Laurie Ross
Funding Agency: Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety

This collaborative action research project works in partnership with the City of Worcester, the Worcester Police Department, and Worcester Community Action Council to understand the effectiveness of the new Start Our Success (SOS) program. This innovative program is designed to provide education, work readiness, counseling, and other support services to young people coming out of jail or lock-up. The research team will examine the strengths and challenges of this program as it is being implemented so as to help the City improve SOS in real time. Another aim is to follow the young people and other stakeholders through the process in order to understand the extent to which the program allows them to maintain full-time, meaningful employment and leave their gangs and illegal activities.

Collaborative Research: Smart Grid: An Analysis of How Socio-Political Contexts Shape Energy Technology Development and Policy
Principal Investigator: Jennie Stephens
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

The term Smart Grid represents a complex set of technologies with potential to enhance the efficiency and reduce costs of electricity production, storage, transmission, distribution and use. Advances in nanotechnologies and new nanomaterials will play crucial roles throughout Smart Grid systems, changing electricity transmission, reliability, resilience, and energy storage, and shaping electricity use and demand management in novel ways. Although Smart Grid systems are critical to developing a sustainable U.S. energy system, significant variation is apparent in visions of what these systems are and how they are developing. By exploring the values and contexts that shape Smart Grid development and implementation, this project contributes to ongoing efforts to accelerate the transition of our aging electricity system to increase future energy security, reduce the threats of climate change, and contribute to sustainable development.

This research, funded by the CISE directorate, the SBE Nano Initiative, and the STS program, is guided by four questions: (1) What are the parameters of the political and policy debates surrounding Smart Grid? (2) How do stakeholders in different regions articulate their visions of Smart Grid development and deployment? (3) What are the major deployment challenges for Smart Grid technologies? (4) How can theory on science, technology and society, socio-technical transitions, and energy technology deployment be refined and expanded to more effectively integrate empirical components of emerging energy technology systems? To answer these research questions, the investigators will analyze Smart Grids in three electricity transmission systems of North America: the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO), the New England Independent System Operator (ISO-New England) and the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT); both MISO and ISO-New England include Canadian interconnections. The principal investigators will conduct policy review and analysis, focus groups, interviews, and media analysis to examine the values that inform Smart Grid development and use as well as barriers to implementation.

The project contributes to a growing body of social scientific research on nanomaterials and scientific innovation. In addition to increasing understanding of national, regional and state-level influences on Smart Grid technology deployment, the researchers' results will enable energy professionals, state and regional planners, policy analysts, non-profits, and businesses to develop more effective strategies for involving the public in Smart Grid technology design, technology implementation, and policy formation.

Type 2: Cycling in the Environment: Regional-Scale Modeling of the Linkages and Feedbacks Among Atmospheric, Terrestrial, Aquatic, and Socio-Economic Processes that Influence Climate at the Decadal Scale
Principal Investigator: Jennie Stephens
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

Intellectual Merit One of the greatest science and engineering challenges of the 21st Century is managing nitrogen (N) in the environment to maximize agricultural productivity while minimizing negative environmental effects. In the Pacific Northwest, the interactions of N, C, climate and human activities are complex. The region has extensive and diverse agricultural lands surrounded by pristine natural ecosystems, interspersed with heavily populated urban areas. The topography of the area is complex, and the terrain is drained by extensive river systems including the vast Columbia River Basin (CRB). Storm patterns are closely tied to the jet stream position and sensitive to long-term circulation patterns including the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillations (PDO). The PDO can be especially prominent in this region, directly affecting precipitation and forest fire regimes. As an additional complication, the northwestern US is influenced by long-range transport of air pollutants from Asia. Our challenge is thus to understand and quantify the interactions and feedbacks between N and C cycling in coupled atmospheric, terrestrial, and aquatic systems; and to the climate system at inter-annual to decadal time-scales over the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region. Our overarching goal is to improve our understanding of the interactions among C, N, and H2O at the regional scale in the context of global change to inform decision makers for better, more effective strategies regarding natural and agricultural resource management. Our approach is to create a regional modeling framework by integrating and/or linking a network of state-of-the-art process-based models that are currently in existence and that are undergoing continuous development and evaluation. Our rationale is that by choosing among the most sophisticated models for each earth system component, and either linking or fully integrating these models into a biosphere relevant earth system model (Bio-EaSM), the integrated modeling framework can be continually improved as each contributory component develops. Our team is particularly well prepared to develop such a modeling framework because it is composed of individuals who are the primary developers or users of each of the model components to be used in Bio-EaSM. The framework includes the following components: WRF for regional meteorology, CMAQ for regional atmospheric chemical transport, VIC for regional hydrology, CROPSYS for agricultural dynamics, RHESSys for natural ecosystem dynamics and NEWS for aquatic nutrient transport. With this framework, we will conduct simulations in a series of steps with increasing model integration and coupling, including extensive model evaluation and future predictive simulations (2010 to 2050), to address questions related to 1) how climate variability affects regional biogeochemical cycling with specific focus on N and C, 2) how do regional N and C cycles feed back to climate in terms of greenhouse gas fluxes in the context of land-use change and inter-annual variability, and 3) how do land use and agricultural production decisions affect the interactions of N, C and climate and how do these interactions interplay with economic drivers. The end products will be a state-of-science regional earth system modeling framework that explicitly addresses N and C flows in the context of inter-annual and decadal climate variability and results from using the Bio_EaSM to investigate climate change and variability effects on regional ecosystem dynamics and interactions related to C and N cycling.

Broader Impacts Our integrated atmosphere-terrestrial-aquatic model will contribute directly to understanding the interactions of N and C cycling as they relate to an array of resource management issues confronting both the private and public sectors. Changes in nutrient cycling have the potential to significantly affect forestry and agriculture, important parts of the economy in the western US. We envision that our research will have an immediate and effective broader impact upon private stakeholders and public policy makers because stakeholders input will be integrated in the research process through advisory and focus group meetings and through the use of online tools. The involvement of stakeholders in the research process is planned to make the research more relevant and also, from a communication research perspective, to investigate how stakeholder involvement affects the research process and perspectives of both stakeholders and scientists. The proposed project also advances trans-disciplinary PhD research education, recognizing the value of effective communication across disciplines among physical and social scientists, economists, and engineers. We will engage doctoral students in research in atmospheric sciences, biogeochemistry, agricultural sciences, hydrology, aquatic chemistry, economics, and communications, all in a trans-disciplinary project context. These efforts are the next step building from our current IGERT grant: Nitrogen Systems: Policy-oriented Integrated Research and Education (NSPIRE) and an ongoing investment in interdisciplinary research, education and outreach at WSU.

Albedo Trends Related to Land Cover Change and Disturbance: A Multi-sensor Approach
Principal Investigator: Jeffrey Masek (NASA GSFC Biospheric Sciences)
Co-Investigator: Feng Gao, Yanmin Shuai (Earth Resources Technology, Inc.)
Co-Is / Institutional PIs: Crystal Schaaf (Boston University Geography); Christopher A. Williams (Clark University Geography)
Funding Agency: NASA,The Science of Terra and Aqua

Numerous papers have highlighted how land-cover change and ecosystem disturbance can alter the surface energy balance through changes in albedo, surface roughness, and evapotranspiration. In some cases, these surface changes may constitute a larger radiative forcing than those arising from related carbon emissions. Past studies on post-disturbance albedo have been limited by the resolution of available MODIS data (500m), which is significantly coarser than the characteristic scales of ecosystem disturbance and human land use. Our project addresses this issue by creating high-resolution (30m) albedo maps through the fusion of Landsat TM/ETM+ directional reflectance with MODIS BRDF/Albedo (MCD43A) data. These maps permit trends in albedo to be evaluated at the characteristic scale of vegetation change (~1 ha).

Two algorithms are proposed to retrieve Landsat-resolution albedo: a "concurrent approach" which depends on overlapping MODIS and Landsat observations from the 2000-2010 period, and an "extended approach", which uses an a priori BRDF table to extend retrievals back to the 1980's. These fused products will be validated using in-situ Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) data. We will then evaluate the albedo trajectories for characteristic types of land cover conversion and disturbance across the globe. Specifically, we will (i) assemble a regional library of albedo values for IGBP land cover types; (ii) assemble time series of post-disturbance albedo from a latitudinal distribution of typical forest disturbance types (fire, insect damage, harvest); (iii) evaluate decadal trends in landscape albedo for "hotspots" of vegetation change; and (iv) assess the radiative forcing associated with historical (since 1700) and future (scenario-based) global land-cover change.

The outcome of the investigation will be an improved quantification of recent and historical albedo changes associated with land cover change and forest disturbance. Such information is needed to reduce uncertainties present in the current IPCC WG1 radiative forcing budget, and to forecast the effects of land management and land cover conversion on future climate.

Impacts of Disturbance History on Carbon Fluxes and Stocks in North America
Principal Investigator: G. James Collatz (NASA GSFC, Biospheric Sciences)
Co-Principal Investigators: Jeffrey G. Masek (NASA GSFC, Biospheric Sciences), Christopher A. Williams (Clark University)
Funding Agency: NASA Terrestrial Ecology

Forests of North America are thought to constitute a significant long term sink for atmospheric carbon but the relative importance of underlying mechanisms is poorly understood. This project seeks to clarify mechanisms and quantify spatial and temporal variability in forest carbon sinks. The work extends a previously NASA-funded project that involved the development of a new modeling framework characterizing carbon consequences of forest disturbance and regrowth based on Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data and remote sensing (Landsat) of forest disturbances. Prior results quantify with greater certainty the regrowth carbon sink in the conterminous US, indicating that it is about half of what is generally quoted. This current research project continues to develop and advance the modeling framework by delving deeper into the mechanisms and intensity of documented disturbances using the improved NAFD products, the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity fire data set, and forest insect damage data sets. In addition, we are engaged in a broader synthesis on the subject by integrating perspectives from flux towers, forest inventories, satellite remote sensing, ecosystem carbon modeling, and atmospheric inversions. We are exploring: (1) mechanistic attribution of forest carbon sinks to disturbance legacies versus growth enhancements; (2) spatial patterns of the continent's process-specific sources and sinks; (3) interannual fluctuations in forest carbon sources and sinks; and (4) implications for managing forests to sequester carbon. From this new work we will provide more accurate estimates of the carbon fluxes and stocks and their implications on current and future atmospheric CO₂ concentrations.

I-Choose: Building Information Sharing Networks to Support Consumer Choice
Principal Investigator: Jing Zhang
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation

The I-Choose Network is being created to support the collaborative development of a data architecture to support the provision of a wide range of information about how, where, and by whom products are manufactured and brought to market as well as information about "green" supply chains or production methods, wages paid to producers or workers in the supply chain, working conditions, environmental impact, or a wide range of other information about the products that they purchase can be delivered to consumers. In order to accomplish this goal, the research team is in the first year of a three-year project to build an I-Choose Data Interoperability Community Network involving consumers, producers, government regulatory agencies and supply chain/distribution across multiple domains and countries. These diverse stakeholders will collaborate to create a series of products necessary for interoperability. The I-Choose Network itself will continue to expand as necessary to carry out the work of the project. These products from this effort include (1) I-Choose as a community-based data interoperability network; (2) an ontology that describes the domain of coffee production, distribution, and consumption; (3) a hierarchical taxonomy that describes the domain of coffee production, distribution, and consumption; (4) a data architecture; (5) a Preliminary I-Choose consumer preference prototype evaluated by selected stakeholder groups; (6) policy analysis and recommendations.