{"id":27035,"date":"2026-02-12T16:50:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T21:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/?post_type=story&p=27035"},"modified":"2026-02-13T11:18:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T16:18:33","slug":"in-brazils-cerrado-savanna-researchers-study-future-climate-change-scenarios","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2026\/02\/12\/in-brazils-cerrado-savanna-researchers-study-future-climate-change-scenarios\/","title":{"rendered":"In Brazil\u2019s Cerrado savanna, researchers study, model future climate change scenarios"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Food, water, and AI: $750,000 NASA grant funds research by geography faculty, students<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In a news photo from China, an elderly couple sits on stools beside a farm field. Nearby, six empty seats represent their adult children, who have left the land to seek prosperity in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a scenario that Geography Professor Gustavo Oliveira<\/a> of Clark\u2019s School of Climate, Environment, and Society<\/a> understands all too well. An expert in global agro-industrial trade and food-supply systems, he has experienced the issues facing small-scale farmers firsthand. Oliveira and his wife, a professor at Amherst College, have traveled back to her native China to help her elderly parents transplant rice. No one else is available to work the farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

For decades, food insecurity commonly \u2014 and mistakenly \u2014 has become linked to population growth, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople still rely on 20th-century thinking about overpopulation and the need to increase food production,\u201d explains Oliveira (above, in a cotton field in Brazil\u2019s Cerrado). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut that way of thinking doesn\u2019t accurately reflect our current reality, which is about urbanization, industrialization, and market forces.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n