United States Carbon Cycle Science Program

An Interagency Partnership

Providing a coordinated & focused scientific strategy for conducting federal carbon cycle research

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Dennis Hansell is a Professor of Chemical Oceanography at the University of Miami, Chair of the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group from 2010 through 2012, and a member the CCSSG since 2008.  His research interests are in biogeochemistry of marine carbon and the major nutrients, with a particular focus on the role of dissolved organic matter in elemental cycling.  He investigates biogeochemical processes in the open ocean and polar seas, using observational approaches such as process studies, time-series, and hydrographic surveys.  He has served with numerous national and international science steering committees and as chairman of the Division of Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry at his university.

Affiliation: Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL
Web Link: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/divs/mac/People/Faculty/Hansell/
Email: dhansell@rsmas.miami.edu

Nicholas Bates is Senior Scientist and Associate Director of Research at the U.S. not-for-profit research institution Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), and a member of the CCSSG since 2007.  His research interests include marine biogeochemistry, ocean time-series observations, ocean carbon cycle dynamics and air-sea CO2 exchange, and the impact of ocean acidification on the marine environment including coral reefs and the Arctic. He has served on several other national and international committees including the IOC-SCOR International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP) scientific steering group, and SOLAS-IMBER working group on surface observations. (Past member)

Affiliation: Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), Ferry Reach, Bermuda
Web link: http://www.bios.edu/Labs/co2lab/co2main.html
E-mail: nick.bates@bios.edu

Richard Birdsey is Project Leader of Research Work Unit “Climate, Fire, and Carbon Cycle Sciences” in the Northern Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service, and Manager of the Forest Service’s Northern Global Change Research Program.  He is a member of the CCSSG since 2004 and was Chair from 2007-2009.  He is a specialist in quantitative methods for large-scale forest inventories and has pioneered the development of methods to estimate national carbon budgets for forest lands from forest inventory data.  He is a lead author of 2 IPCC Special Reports, a lead author of the first North American “State of the Carbon Cycle” report, and contributor to several assessments of climate change in the U.S.  He has published extensively on forest management and strategies to increase carbon sequestration, and facilitated the development of decision-support tools for policy and management.  (Past member)

Affiliation: Climate, Fire, and Carbon Cycle Sciences, USDA Forest Service, Newtown Square, PA
Web Link:  http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/people/Birdsey
Email: rbirdsey@fs.fed.us

Wei-Jun Cai is a Professor of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia and a member the CCSSG since 2010.  His research interests are in air-sea CO2 flux and biogeochemistry of carbon cycle.  He investigates CO2 flux and inorganic carbon dynamics in many estuarine and continental shelf systems and the Arctic Ocean. He also develops microelectrodes (pH and pCO2) for sedimentary carbon cycling research. He has played a major role in starting ocean CO2 research programs in China through international collaborations. He has served with many national and international science steering committees.

Affiliation: Department of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Web Link: http://www.marsci.uga.edu/facultypages/cai
Email: wcai@uga.edu

Kenneth Davis is a Professor in the Department of Meteorology and a member of the CCSSG since 2008.  His research group studies how the earth's surface interacts with the atmosphere. His group observes: trace gas fluxes using anemometers and gas analyzers mounted on towers and aircraft; atmospheric turbulence using ground-based and airborne LIDAR (a laser version of a radar); and soil and vegetation conditions using satellites. They hope to determine which environmental factors will govern future concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and how ecosystem processes interact with boundary layer turbulence to alter climate and weather. He is also the Director of the Northeastern Regional Center, National Institute for Climatic Change Research, and a Co-Chair of the North American Carbon Program Science Steering Group.

Affiliation: Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Web Links: http://www.niccr.psu.edu, http://www.nacarbon.org, http://www.ring2.psu.edu, http://cheas.psu.edu
Email: kjd10@psu.edu

Scott Doney is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
Chair of the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) and Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC) Scientific Steering Committees and a member the CCSSG since 2002. His research interests are in marine biogeochemistry, the global carbon cycle and climate change, with a particular focus on ocean acidification. Much of his research involves computational methods including data analysis, satellite remote sensing and numerical models. (Past member)

Affiliation: Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA
Web Link: http://www.whoi.edu/profile.do?id=sdoney
Email: sdoney@whoi.edu

Jae Edmonds is a Chief Scientist and Laboratory Fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute, a collaboration with the University of Maryland at College Park and a member of the CCSSG since 2007 (2nd Term).  His research is in the areas of long-term, global, energy, technology, economy, and climate change spans three decades, producing several books, numerous scientific papers and countless presentations.  He is one of the pioneers in the field of integrated assessment modeling of climate change.  His principal research focus is the role of energy technology in addressing climate change.  He is the Chief Scientist for the Integrated Assessment Research Program in the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy.  He has been an active participant in all of the major assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Past member)

Affiliation: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Web Link: http://economic-analysis.pnl.gov/bios/edmonds.stm
Email: jae@pnl.gov

Kevin Gurney is an Associate Professor in the Earth and Atmospheric Science department and the Agronomy department and a member of the CCSSG since 2010. His recent work involves simulation of the global carbon cycle using the inverse approach, characterizing fossil fuel CO2 in North America (the “Vulcan” and “Hestia” projects), the linkages between terrestrial carbon exchange and climate variability, and deforestation and carbon/climate feedbacks.  He is also a member of NOAA’s Global Carbon Cycle Science Steering Committee, the international Global Carbon Project Science Steering Committee, and NASA’s Mid-continent intensive task force.  He is an Associate Editor of the journal Carbon Management and a recipient of Sigma Xi’s 2010 Young Investigator Award and NSF’s 2009 CAREER award.

Affiliation: Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences & Department of Agronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Web Links: http://www.purdue.edu/eas/carbon, http://www.purdue.edu/transcom, http://www.purdue.edu/climate/hestia, http://www.purdue.edu/eas/carbon/vulcan
Email: kgurney@purdue.edu

Eric Kasischke is a Professor of Biogeography at the University of Maryland, and a member of the Carbon Cycle Science Steering Group since 2008.  His research interests are in fire ecology in boreal forests, with a particular interest in how changes to climate and the fire regime are affecting post-fire succession and carbon cycling in black spruce forests. His investigations include a combination of field-based studies in interior Alaska, analyses of information derived from satellite remote sensing data, and the integrated assessment of fire and its effects at landscape and regional scales using geospatial approaches. (Past member)

Affiliation: Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Web Link: http://www.geog.umd.edu/people/Kasischke.html
Email: ekasisch@umd.edu

Aslam Khalil is a Professor of Physics at Portland State University.  His term on the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group began in 2010.  He has worked on the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and ozone depleting compounds.  In recent years he has been studying the processes that control emissions from terrestrial ecosystems and agriculture. His work integrates the observations of sources and atmospheric changes into impacts on the earth’s climate, global warming and human life. He is a founding member of the Center for Climate and Aerosol Research at Portland State University.

Affiliation: Department of Physics, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR
Email: Khalilm@pdx.edu

Haroon S. Kheshgi is the Global Climate Change Program Leader at ExxonMobil’s Corporate Strategic Research and member of the CCSSG since 2005 (2nd Term). His research addresses many aspects of global climate change including carbon cycle, detection and attribution of climate change, paleoclimate implications, and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.  He was an author or review editor of the last three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments, its Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, and its Special Report on Land Use Change.  He is currently Associate Editor of the journal Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies for Global Change and a member of the NRC Climate Research Committee. (Past member)

Affiliation: ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, Annandale, NJ
Email: haroon.s.kheshgi@exxonmobil.com

Anthony “Tony” King is a Research Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a member of the CCSSG since 2008. His research interests are in systems ecology; ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem modeling; global biogeochemistry; landscape ecology; spatially structured population dynamics; and model analysis. He is also the Co-Chair of the North American Carbon Program Science Steering Group.

Affiliation: Carbon-Climate Simulation Science Group, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN
Web Link:  http://www.esd.ornl.gov/people/king/index.shtml
Email: kingaw@ornl.gov

Cindy Lee is a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the Marine Sciences Research Center, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, at Stony Brook University, and a member the CCSSG since 2005.  Her research interests are in marine organic geochemistry, with a particular focus on the marine carbon and nitrogen cycles.  She investigates the distribution and behavior of biogenic organic compounds in the open and coastal oceans, and has participated in several international global research programs as well as in individual scale studies.  She has served with numerous national and international science steering committees, is a past president of AGU’s Ocean Sciences section, and is a Fellow of the Geochemical Society and AGU. (Past member)

Affiliation: SOMAS, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
Web Link: http://alpha1.msrc.sunysb.edu/people/lee.htm
Email: cindy.lee@sunysb.edu

Michael Lomas is a Senior Scientist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and a member of the CCSSG since 2010.  His primary interest is the ecological linkages between phytoplankton functional diversity and biogeochemical cycling of the major macronutrients, carbon, nitrogen phosphorus and silica. A particular focus is how ocean changes, for example the warming and loss of sea ice in subarctic seas or the acidification of the subtropical ocean, impacts the relative abundance of specific phytoplankton groups and the impact on biogeochemical cycles.  He studies the interconnection of these processes in subtropical and subarctic seas through process studies and ocean time-series.  He currently is also serving as a member of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST) Science Advisory Board.

Affiliation: Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, St. George, Bermuda
Web Links: http://www.bios.edu/faculty/pop_michael_lomas.html, http://www.bios.edu/Labs/pel/
Email:michael.lomas@bios.edu

David McGuire is a Professor of Ecology in the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a member of the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group since 2005 (2nd Term).   He is also director of the Spatial Ecology Laboratory in the Institute of Arctic Biology at UAF.  His research focuses on how responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change may influence the climate system with an emphasis on carbon cycle feedbacks.  He has served three terms on the Board of Editors for Ecological Applications and served on the Polar Research Board’s committee to review NASA’s Polar Geophysical Data Sets. He also serves on the SSC for the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) and the SSC for the Arctic Community-wide Hydrological Analysis and Monitoring Program.   Internationally, he has also served on several international committees concerned with global change science in northern high latitudes, including chair of Arctic Monitoring and Assessment’s Program’s scientific assessment of the arctic carbon cycle. He is currently serving as co-chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission study to develop the report “Scaling Studies in Arctic System Science and Policy Support: A Call-to-Research”. (Past member)

Affiliation: United State Geological Survey and University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK
Web Link: http://www.sel.uaf.edu/dave/ 
Email: admcguire@alaska.edu

Charles “Chip” Miller is a Project Scientist in the Atmospheric Sciences section of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. His research interests are in atmospheric chemistry and photochemistry, molecular spectroscopy, carbon cycle science, and free radical structure/reactivity relationships. He was the Deputy Principal Investigator of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) experiment from 2001 - 2009 and is Deputy Project Scientist of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), a mission designed to make precise, time-dependent global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from an Earth orbiting satellite. He is principal investigator of the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE).

Affiliation: Earth Atmospheric Science, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Web Link: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov
Email: charles.e.miller@jpl.nasa.gov

Keith Paustian is a Professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University and a member of the CCSSG since 2005 (2nd Term).  His main area of research deals with soil organic matter dynamics and carbon and nitrogen cycling in cropland and grassland ecosystems.  A main focus of his research is modeling and field measurement of soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from soils.  Current work includes developing national-scale soil greenhouse gas inventory methods, developing decision support tools for on-farm greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and methods for assessing sustainable land management practices in developing countries.   He serves on several national and international advisory boards and panels dealing with mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from land use activities.  (Past member)

Affiliation: Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
Web link: http://soilcrop.colostate.edu/paustian/index.html
Email: keith.paustian@colostate.edu

Diane E. Pataki is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth System Science, School of Physical Sciences and Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and a member of the CCSSG since 2008.  Her research studies center on plant physiological ecology and ecosystem ecology with an emphasis on the role of plants and soils in human-dominated and urban ecosystems. Her research focus is on the interactions between urban plants and atmospheric composition, pollution, local climate, and greenhouse gases. She is also on the Board of Advisors to the Editor, New Phytologist journal, Steering Committee, Biosphere-Atmosphere Stable Isotope Network (BASIN) and Steering Committee, Terrestrial Ecosystem Responses to Atmospheric and Climatic Change (TERACC) Network (Past member)

Affiliation: Earth System Science School of Physical Sciences and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA
Web Links: http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5097,  http://www.ess.uci.edu/~dpataki/, http://www.ess.uci.edu/~dpataki/IRMS/index.html, http://globalchange.bio.uci.edu/
Email: dpataki@uci.edu

James Randerson is a Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at University of California, Irvine and a member of the CCSSG since 2008. He studies the global carbon cycle using remote sensing measurements of the land surface and atmospheric trace gases. His current research themes include climate-carbon cycle feedbacks, land use change, and assessments of the role of fire in the Earth System. He has conducted field work in Alaska and Siberia to assess fire effects on ecosystem processes, atmospheric composition, and climate. He is a member of the science team for NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory and co-chair of the biogeochemistry working group of the Community Climate System Model. In 2005 he was the recipient of the James B. Macelwane Medal awarded by the American Geophysical Union. (Past member)

Affiliation: Earth System Science Department, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA
Web Link: http://www.ess.uci.edu/~jranders/
Email: “James T. Randerson” jranders@uci.edu

Peter Raymond is an Associate Professor in the Yale School of Forestry at Yale University and a member of the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group since 2007 (2nd Term).  His main interest is the role of streams, rivers, and coastal systems in the earth's carbon cycle.  His research aims to understand the controls on the age of carbon in rivers, the factors governing the lateral transport of watershed carbon, the impact of terrestrial transfers on the carbon budget of riverine and coastal ecosystems and the controls of air-water CO2 exchange in coastal systems.  In addition to his current position at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, he is an associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences and on the executive committee of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute (Past member)

Affiliation: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Web Link: http://environment.yale.edu/raymond/index.html
Email: peter.raymond@yale.edu

Karen Seto is an Associate Professor in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University and a member of the CCSSG since 2010.   Her main research interests include urban growth and land conversion, climate change and urbanization, and urban spatial development. Her research aims to understand the drivers of urbanization, future patterns of urban growth, and the environmental consequences of urban expansion. Her geographic region of specialization is China, where she has worked on urban development issues for more than fifteen years.  She is Co-Chair of the International Human Dimensions Programme of Global Environmental Change (IHDP) Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project, and a Coordinating Lead Author for IPCC AR5. From 2002 to 2008, she was the Remote Sensing Thematic Leader for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Commission on Ecosystem Management. She is an Aldo Leopold Fellow and a recipient of the NASA New Investigator award and the NSF CAREER award.

Affiliation: School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Web Link:  http://environment.yale.edu/profile/seto/
Email: karen.seto@yale.edu

Ted Schuur is an Associate Professor in the Department of Botany at the University of Florida, a Research Associate in the Institute for Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and member of the CCSSG since 2010.  His studies focus on the interactions between terrestrial carbon cycling and climate change.  One of his major research interests is to understand feedbacks to atmospheric CO2 from warming temperature, thawing permafrost and changing fire regimes in high latitudes ecosystems.  He has received new investigator awards from NASA and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for his work on carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, and a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation for research and education centered on the use of radiocarbon in ecology and earth system science.

Affiliation: Department of Botany and Zoology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
Web Link:  http://www.biology.ufl.edu/ecosystemdynamics/
Email: tschuur@ufl.edu