Two years ago, as newly inaugurated President George W. Bush was describing his opposition to the Kyoto climate change treaty, the Center on Global Change was little more than a glimmer in the eye of Duke environmental scientists. Since then, the interdisciplinary center has grown into a catalyst for ecological forecasting, focusing its resources on developing new and innovative ways of addressing environmental problems.
Beginning with its inception in the summer of 2001, the center has operated from its headquarters in Brightleaf Square. It is now looking to move to a more efficient location within the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. William Schlesinger, who was named dean of the Nicholas School in February 2001, hopes the center will be relocated onto campus next year.
"Not as many people could get as much as they could out of the center. We were isolated in Brightleaf Square, and it was difficult to work there when you also had to be on the main campus," said Michael Dietze, a graduate student in ecology who was a member of last semester's working group at the center.
Developed by Schlesinger and Professor of Biology James Clark, the center aims to effectively combine science and policy on a more influential level. To this end, it supports new proposals from faculty members across the University to promote climate change research.
"Duke is known for excellent environmental science across a range of units." said Clark, who is also academic director of the center. "You can always find stellar faculty with strong research initiatives. Duke brings these strengths together to make it possible to accomplish such rare opportunities."
Attracting faculty members, scientists and students from the University and occasionally other institutions, the center is becoming a magnet for intellectual acuity.
"It's a place to pull together diverse and world-class colleagues from across campus. This was the reason I was attracted to Duke," said Associate Professor of Civil Engineering John Albertson, a member of the center's executive committee, who came to Duke from the University of Virginia last year.
Each semester a different working group fills the Brightleaf Square offices to begin a research project. A working group comprises faculty members and postdoctoral and graduate students from Arts and Sciences, the Nicholas School and the Pratt School of Engineering to conduct a research project. The center provides them with the ability to start a project pilot, incubate initial findings and prepare a preliminary application for publication.
"I guess you can consider it a think tank to stimulate global change ideas and research," said Schlesinger, also a James B. Duke professor of earth and ocean sciences and, at times, himself a vocal proponent of global environmental initiatives.
The researchers agree that the subject matter is complex and needs to be attacked from different angles to be successful--hence the interdisciplinary approach.
"The working group really facilitates dialogue between all scientists and aids 'language' barriers. You need physical, biological and social scientists to solve such problems in a lab," said Albertson, a member of the fall semester's working group.
Faculty members at the center consider graduate student participation a key component in its success. Not only do graduate students do most of the research, said Pankaj Agarwal, a member of the center's executive committee and professor of computer science, but they stitch together the different disciplines.
Each working group is also responsible for team-teaching a graduate student seminar series. Topics are suggested by faculty members, and the group is responsible for preparing lectures and hosting speakers. Students are usually responsible for presenting a research project at the end of the semester.
Currently, Susan Lozier, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences, is spearheading an investigation on ocean responses to climate change. Specifically, her working group, comprised of physical and biological oceanographers, a statistical climatologist, a computational scientist and an ocean modeler, is studying heat distribution and carbon reservoirs and their effects on the oceanic ecosystem.
Last semester, Clark led a working group involved in predicting the future of forests, incorporating data on socioeconomic changes, carbon dioxide levels and climate changes. He said he hopes their conclusions will eventually be valuable to decision-makers in natural resource management and conservation.
For the future, Barbara Braatz, executive director of the center, is looking to incorporate the skills and talents of scientists from other universities and countries. Participants in the next working group are being recruited from Princeton University, Australia, New Zealand and China.
Agarwal hopes the center will expand the frontier of knowledge.
"Duke should become a national center on the cutting edge in global change. [The center] will certainly have more tangible outcomes within the next few years that will permeate to other levels," he said.
The researchers hope a new location for their main offices will help them continue enhance the study of global change.
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