Watch an interview with assistant professor Karen Frey on The Polaris Project.
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.
Emergence of an Institution for Sustainable Development: Cross-country Study of the Global Reporting Initiative
Principal
Investigator: Halina S. Brown
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
The subject of this cross-disciplinary research is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), a rapidly diffusing system for voluntary reporting of environmental sustainability performance by companies worldwide. The process of institutionalization of the GRI in three countries with different regulatory styles (the United States, the Netherlands, and Hungary) will be examined and compared. The work will focus on the organizational field: it will follow the dynamic interactions within and among the key actors who collectively comprise the institution of GRI reporting.
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.
Strengthening Vulnerable Communities in the Worcester Built Environment
Co-Principal
Investigators: Timothy Downs and Laurie Ross
Funding Agency: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
The aim of this research is to test two coupled working hypotheses: (1) a manageable, reduced set of primary built-environment stressors of a physical, chemical and socio-economic nature conspire to drive human health and well-being vulnerability in the Main South and Piedmont neighborhoods of the city of Worcester; and (2) this socio-economic vulnerability can be described and improved through an anticipatory process that fosters experiential learning, builds community ownership, strengthens the adaptive capacity of those set most at risk, and makes environmental and health promotion policies more responsive to those most in need.
AIDS2031: Social Drivers of the Epidemic's Cluster
Principal
Investigator: William Fisher
Funding Agency: UNAIDS
AIDS 2031 has been developed to chart a course that would shift the global AIDS response from today's short-term, crisis management, approach to a long-term sustainable response. The Drivers working group's responsibility is to raise a number of questions related to the key social drivers of the epidemic.
Bridging Barriers: Meeting Youth Immigrant and Refugee Health Needs in Worcester, MA
Principal Investigator: Ellen Foley
Funding Agency: Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts
Due to the rapid growth of Worcester's Asian and African communities in the past decade, existing service providers have not kept pace in addressing the health needs of immigrant and refugee youth, or ensuring that this youth population has access to obtainable services. For a variety of reasons immigrant and refugee youth tend to be uncomfortable seeking out youth services and participating in youth activities at the Worcester Boys and Girls Club and the Worcester Youth Center. One of the most dynamic youth-adult coalitions in Worcester, the HOPE Coalition, currently has very little representation from the African and Asian youth communities. By strengthening an emerging coalition (including Fairbridge Project International and The Southeast Asian Coalition Center) of community organizations working to provide social services to the growing immigrant and refugee populations in Worcester, this project will address the particular health needs of immigrant and refugee youth through a multi-phase research and intervention project. The first phase of the project entails a participatory action research process that will elicit youth perspectives on their unmet health needs. In the second phase of the project the coalition will use the research findings to design a youth health and empowerment curriculum that addresses key concerns of immigrant and refugee youth.
Read the full report (PDF)
Impacts of Sea Ice Variability and Polynya Formation
Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
The Bering Sea is among the most productive marine ecosystems in the world, supporting important commercial fisheries, subsistence resources for Native Alaskans, and large populations of marine birds and mammals that have fluctuated in the past as a result of cyclic regime changes. However, some higher trophic organisms have recently been categorized as threatened (spectacled eiders) or endangered (Steller sea lions), suggesting ecosystem change may be in progress. Although sea ice is currently a dominant feature in this high-latitude shelf environment, we have no clear understanding of how climate warming and associated variability in sea ice cover will influence ecosystem structure and function in this region. It is likely, however, that further significant ecosystem shifts will transpire with projected declines in seasonal sea ice cover. This proposed research will utilize satellite remotely sensed data to investigate key temporal and spatial linkages between sea ice variability, polynyas and chlorophyll biomass throughout the northern Bering Sea region, which can be subsequently used to predict how warming and an associated reduction in sea ice cover will affect productivity at all levels.
The Polaris Project: Rising Stars in the Arctic
Principal Investigator: Karen Frey
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
The Polaris Project is a multifaceted effort that includes: a field course and research experience for undergraduate students in the Siberian Arctic, several new arctic-focused undergraduate courses taught at colleges across the United States and in Russia, the opportunity to initiate research programs in the Siberian Arctic, and a wide range of outreach activities. The Polaris Project will help train future leaders in arctic research and education, which is essential given the rapid and profound changes underway in the Arctic in response to global warming.
Watch an interview with assistant professor Karen Frey on The Polaris Project.
Why Do Plants Comply with Environmental Regulation? The Importance of Enforcement Activity, Abatement Costs, and Community
Pressures
Principal Investigator: Wayne Gray
Funding Agency: Environmental Protection Agency
This study examines factors affecting environmental performance (both compliance status and emissions for air, water, and toxic pollutants) in paper mills, steel mills, and electric utilities. Four questions will be addressed: (1) How do corporate environmental culture and government regulatory interventions influence a plant's environmental performance? (2) Do community and political pressures on the state and local level significantly affect performance? (3) Why do firms and plants differ in their response to government interventions? (4) Is environmental performance in one plant related to the performance of nearby plants?
Use of Biomarkers and Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) Modeling in 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.
Sustainability Science: From Knowledge into Action
Principal Investigator: Roger E. Kasperson
Funding Agency: Lucile Packard Foundation
The purpose of this project is to help maintain and indeed accelerate the momentum of the sustainability science initiative over the two years between mid-2004 and the launch of the next phase of the program in mid-2006. Two closely related elements will be studied: a focused Partnership Team effort to link knowledge with action in emerging areas of sustainability science; and a Science/Practitioner dialogue to catalyze significant increases in the quantity and effectiveness of knowledge/action partnerships around the world, and to develop and implement the capacity to establish and implement such partnerships.
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.
The Socio-spatial Aspects of Industrial Change in Bolivia: Manufacturers, Regions, and the Prospects for Global Value Chain Integration
Principal Investigator: James Murphy
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Global economic trends indicate that while Latin America has generally struggled with export-led development, Asia's economies have prospered through increasing global market integration. The contrasts are particularly significant in the manufacturing sector, and the growing gaps between Asia and Latin America raise important questions about why Latin American manufacturers have been less successful in reaping the benefits of economic liberalization policies. Bolivian industries have performed particularly poorly. This study examines Bolivia's manufacturing sector and assesses the prospects for its firms and businesses to upgrade their production capabilities such that they might develop stronger ties to global markets.
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU): supplemental monies will fund two undergraduate students who will support the main project--on global value chain integration in Bolivia's wood products industry--by conducting a semi-independent analysis of forestry policies and their relationship to growth, innovation, and development in the wood products sector. The focus of their research activities will be on understanding how forest management policies are influencing the development of the industry and on determining the degree to which current policies are encouraging and facilitating sustainable management practices in Bolivia's forestry sector.
Suburbanization, Water-Use, Nitrogen Cycling & Eutrophication in the 21st Century: Interactions, Feedbacks & 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: www.clarku.edu/offices/publicaffairs/news/press/2007/NSFgrant.cfm; www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110437&org=NSF&from=news; http://wicn.org/audio/inquiry-colin-d-polsky-and-r-gil-pontius-jr-groundwater-massachussets; http://telegram.com/article/20070914/NEWS/709140635/1008/NEWS02; and http://www.newburyportnews.com/punews/local_story_288115847
Plum Island Ecosystems LTER
Principal Investigator: R. Gil Pontius
Funding Agency: Subcontract with Marine Biological Laboratories, under NSF Prime Award
This is an integrated research, education and outreach program whose goal is to develop a predictive understanding of the long-term response of watershed and estuarine systems at the land-sea interface to changes in climate, land use and sea level. Understanding and predicting how multiple stresses affect the sustainability of ecosystems is one of the most crucial challenges in environmental biology. How several aspects of global change influence organic matter and nutrient biogeochemistry and estuarine food webs will be studied.
Ecosystem-level Response to Large Scale Disturbance in Southern Yucatan
Principal Investigator: John Rogan
Funding Agency: Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
This is a subaward from Rutgers University in support of research to learn about the impact of weather extremes on forests by studying important ecological parameters in seasonally dry sub-tropical forest of the Southern Yucatan Peninsula after a hurricane event. Dr. RoganĠs portion is to determine the effect of Hurricane Dean on future fire disturbances, forest composition, soil nutrients and the ecology of invasive species to contribute to new knowledge of the ecosystem and landscape-level responses to the increased frequency of large-scale hurricane disturbance in forest and the role of invasive species and agricultural burning in suppressing natural forest recovery. This research will contribute to understanding forest ecosystem and landscape-level responses following large-scale disturbances and to increase the technical and scientific capacity of protected Area agencies at Calakmul and Sian KaĠan Biosphere Reserves to establish and employ science-based approaches for long-term management.
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 will work 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.
Diffusion of Emerging Energy Technologies within a State Context
Principal Investigator: Jennie Stephens
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
This cross-disciplinary research examines the interconnected, state-level, socio-political influences on diffusion and deployment of emerging energy technologies with potential to contribute to an energy system transformation for climate change mitigation and energy security.
Carbon Dioxide and Water Flux Response to Extreme Weather and Climate Anomalies: A Fluxnet Syntheses
Principal Investigator: Christopher Williams
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
In this project researchers will perform a synthesis motivated by findings at individual flux tower sites that extreme weather and climate events (e.g., droughts, floods, hurricanes, and ice-storms) lead to pronounced and protracted anomalies in key components of the measured local carbon and water budgets. The PIs will assess the degree of commonality across flux tower sites in the response of the ecosystem to extreme events, derive a coherent description of these responses, and use remote sensing data to extrapolate spatially coherent and persistent impacts on ecosystems, specifically on vegetation, that subsequently may impact carbon and water balances and climate trajectories on a larger spatial scale. The PIs will also assess the ability of land surface models spanning a wide range of complexity to simulate the observed response of terrestrial state variables and fluxes to extreme events when driven by observed meteorology. The project is composed entirely of a team of early-career scientists.
This work is supported under the NSF Carbon and Water in the Earth System solicitation, an interdisciplinary funding opportunity from the Directorate of Geosciences.