SAGE is active in assessing how historical and future changes in climate impact energy use, air quality, water availability and quality, soils, land use, agricultural production and land-use decision-making, natural vegetation distributions, the urban environment, as well as public health. Furthermore, we are also studying how land cover and land use changes at local to regional scales can influence the climate system. A portion of our effort focuses on building and testing computer models of the Earth's atmosphere, ecosystems, watersheds, and their interactions with the climate system, as well as use of remote sensing information from space. These activities are helping to support decision-making at the state, national, and international levels related to the wide-ranging impacts of climate change to life on our planet. Climate research activities at SAGE tie closely to the Center for Climatic Research, the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, the Energy Institute, and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW-Madison.

SAGE is also excited to launch the SAGE is also excited to launch the third year of the Climate Leadership Challenge (CLC), with a Grand Prize of $50,000 as well as major cash prizes to 5 additional finalists. The CLC is a campus-wide competition modeled on the "X-Prize", to come up with an idea that could change the world and contribute to global warming solutions and environmental sustainability. The CLC is supported through a generous grant from the Global Stewards Society – John F. & Mary Cooper; Gary & Ellora Cooper; Christine Cooper; John & Mary K. Noreika; Peter Vogel, Vogel Brothers Building Company; David Beck-Engel, J.H. Findorff & Son; Scott J. Reppert, Superior Health Linens.

P.I.s

• Dr. Holly Gibbs is an expert on land use and climate, including quantifying the carbon stored in tropical forests, connecting science and international climate policy, and assessing the climate impacts of biofuels.

• Dr. Tracey Holloway examines links between climate, chemistry, and energy, with a focus on potential changes in air quality due to climate variability and long-term climate change.

• Dr. Chris Kucharik and his group focus on integrating field observations, climate datasets, and numerical models of natural and managed ecosystems to better understand the influence of changing climate on ecosystem services as well as how land management can impact local to regional climate regimes. He is currently serving on the Science Council of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI).

• Dr. Mutlu Ozdogan examines the interrelationships between climate, land-use, water use, and agricultural productivity in arid and semi-arid regions.

• Dr. Jonathan Patz studies pulic health risks of climate change, from heat waves and air pollution to water- and vctor-borne diseases.

• Dr. Annemarie Schneider investigates global and regional climate change through the lens of urbanization, with a range of cross-disciplinary projects aimed at understanding the human dimensions of environmental change.

Students & Post-Docs

Justin Bagley, Rachel Licker, Dr. Monica Harkey, Melissa Motew, Evren Soylu, Yang Yang.

Ongoing Projects

Assessing Carbon Neutrality and Ecology of Different Biofuel Cropping Systems in the Midwest U.S.
Lead PI: Chris Kucharik
Collaborators: Randy Jackson and Josh Posner (UW Agronomy); Brianna Laube (Nelson Institute Environment and Resources MS student); Michael Cruse (Nelson Institute Environment and Resources PhD candidate); Gregg Sanford (Agronomy PhD candidate and research specialist)
Funding source: US Department of Energy - Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC)
SAGE Students: none
Project description: Kucharik is collaborating with colleagues in the Department of Agronomy (Prof. Randy Jackson, Prof. Josh Posner) to better understand how a shift to new cropping systems or rotations may impact carbon balance across the Midwest, as well as ecosystem structure and functioning. The work is part of the Sustainability Science Team (Area 4) of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), funded through the U.S. Department of Energy. Studies of net ecosystem exchange, plant phenology, greenhouse gas fluxes, and soil carbon pool changes at the field scale (near the UW Agricultural Research Station at Arlington) will be used to help parameterize and validate ecosystem modeling tools designed to scale-up across the Midwest.

CAQE (Climate, Air Quality, and Energy) – Climate, Air Quality, and Energy. A collection of intersecting projects addressing how energy use trade-offs will affect both climate and air quality, especially in the Upper Midwest. Collaboration between Holloway, Greg Nemet, and Paul Meier (Director, Energy Institute). CAQE researchers will evaluate how electricity generation trade-offs will effect both climate and air quality, how expanded railway service could reduce freight emissions, and how biofuels and other short-term strategies could reduce emissions from heavy-duty vehicles. Funding from Wisconsin Focus on Energy and UW CFIRE.

Choosing a Portfolio of Technology Policies in an Uncertain World (Nemet) – This project aims to provide a framework for designing a portfolio of technology policies to address climate change. The researchers model the effects of combinations of policy instruments on a portfolio of technologies, when both the outcomes of the technology policies and the effects of climate change are uncertain. The project evaluates combinations of three policy instruments: government funded R&D; subsidies for demand; and carbon prices.http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0962100

Climate and Air Quality – Prof. Holloway's research group explores connection between climate variability and air quality, especially the response of ground-level ozone and two leading types of particulate matter (sulfate and nitrate) to temperature and other variables. A manuscript is in preparation, and work will be presented next as an Invited Talk at the Fall 2011 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in San Francisco, with funding in part from NASA.

Climate change impacts on populations in urban/rural areas - Schneider and collaborator Katherine Curtis (Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, Center for Demography and Ecology) investigate the role of spatial variability in time-correlated climate and population projections across urban/rural areas. This project focuses specifically on connecting sea-level rise predictions along the U.S. coast to county-level projections of population size, age structure, racial and economic composition, and migration patterns in order to better understand the social, economic and political ramifications of climate change.

Climate Change, Shifting Land Use, and Urbanization in a Midwestern Agricultural Landscape: Challenges for Water Quality and Quantity
Lead PI: Chris Kucharik
UW Collaborators: Jason Schatz (Env/Resources PhD student), Steve Carpenter, Steve Loheide, Adena Rissman, Monica Turner, Corinna Gries, Eric Booth, Elizabeth Katt-Reinders
Outreach partners: Edgewood College (Prof. Jim Lorman), Wisconsin Public TV, UW Lakeshore Nature Preserve
Funding source: National Science Foundation
Post doc: Evren Soylu
SAGE Students: Melissa Motew
Project description: This project focuses on the Yahara Watershed of southern Wisconsin, which is an exemplar of water-related issues in the Upper Midwest, exacerbated by urbanization. We are addressing several key questions: (1) How do different patterns of land cover, land management, and water resource engineering practices affect the resilience of freshwater ecosystems under a changing climate? Numerical models will evaluate changes in key benefits humans receive from sustainable management of freshwater resources (flood regulation, groundwater recharge, water quality, and lake recreation) as well as benefits related to terrestrial landscapes (food, bioenergy, carbon sequestration, climate regulation, and recreation). (2) How can governance systems for water and land use be made more responsive to drivers of change to meet diverse human needs? (3) In what ways are human-environment systems able to cope with change and in what ways are they vulnerable to potential changes in climate and freshwaters? The project includes a subcomponent that will establish a network of temperature/humidity sensors across Dane County to quantify the spatial extent and intensity of the Urban Heat Island centered on the city of Madison.

Climate and Management Drivers of Agricultural Productivity in Eastern Mediterranean – Ozdogan is investigating the role of local management (fertilizer use, better seeds) versus global atmospheric teleconnections (North Atlantic Oscillation) on cereal productivity in Turkey and the Middle East using empirical evidence and Agro-IBIS, an advanced ecosystem model.

Climate Change Health Impacts in the Great Lakes Region – Drs. Patz and Holloway are collaborating with Dr. Steve Vavrus, Center for Climatic Research, Nelson Institute on this project.  This EPA-sponsored project  “Health Risks from Climate Variability and Change in the Upper Midwest: a Place-based Assessment of Climate-related Morbidity”  primarily addresses the risks of heat-related illness and water contamination from extreme precipitation for the state of Wisconsin.  We also project mid-century risk scenarios for the region.  This grant is in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, and will the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

Climate Change in Wisconsin – Kucharik is documenting recent climate changes across Wisconsin from 1950-2006 (temperature and precipitation trends) and is collaborating with scientists from the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research (Dan Vimont, Steve Vavrus, Michael Notaro, David Lorenz) to downscale and de-bias IPCC 2007 scenarios of future climate change (through the year 2100) from Global Circulation Models (GCMs) at 8 km spatial resolution across Wisconsin. Funding is from Wisconsin Focus on Energy.

Heat Waves, Air Quality, and Health – A SAGE collaborative team is advancing work on the impacts of heat waves on electricity emissions, air quality and health, under both current and future climate. One project, funded by the National Institutes of Health and lead by Prof. Patz explores climate change impacts on health and air quality, including the impacts of increased electricity production associated with higher demand for air condition. Another project, funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and lead by Prof. Holloway, quantifies how increased deployment of solar photovoltaics might improve air quality, especially during extreme heat events. Both projects focus on the eastern U.S., with early results expected in 2012.

Impacts of Biofuel-driven Changes in Land Use and Cover on Flows of Water, Carbon and Nutrients to Freshwaters
Lead PI: Chris Kucharik
Collaborators: Steve Carpenter (UW Limnology), Steve Loheide (UW Civil and Environmental Engineering, Monica Turner (UW Zoology), Emily Stanley (UW Limnology), Eric Booth
Funding source: National Science Foundation
SAGE Students: Kate Anderson
Project description: Kucharik is collaborating with co-investigators of the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research (NTL-LTER) project to study how the changing distribution of croplands affect nutrient flux to freshwaters and the cycling of C in the terrestrial-aquatic system, as well as how alternative biofuel feedstocks other than corn grain might impact water quality, carbon sequestration, and climate regulation. The Agro-IBIS model is being used across the Yahara Lakes watershed in southern Wisconsin to address these questions.

Impacts of Climate Change on Air Quality – Holloway and students employ a range of models to quantify the response of ozone and other species to climate variability and change.  

Impacts of Climate Change on Ground-level Ozone and Mercury Chemistry – Holloway and students employ statistical and dynamical models to project climate change impacts on tropospheric ozone, quantify individual climate impacts, and characterize non-linear processes from urban to global scales. Funding from the UW Graduate School. In collaboration with Jamie Schauer, Holloway and student evaluate the EPA's CMAQ model treatment of mercury chemistry in the Upper Midwestern U.S., identifying key uncertainties, model sensitivities, and response to improved chemical processes. Funding from the U.S. EPA.

Impacts of Historical and Future Changes in Climate and Atmospheric CO2 on Terrestrial Ecosystem Structure and Functioning in the Midwestern U.S.
Lead PI: Chris Kucharik
Collaborators: John Lenters (University of Nebraska-Lincoln); Tracy Twine (University of Minnesota)
Funding source: US Department of Energy - National Institute for Climate Change Research (NICCR)
SAGE Students: Melissa Motew
Project description: Kucharik is collaborating with Dr. John Lenters at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to and Dr. Tracy Twine at the University of Minnesota to understand how past and anticipated (1948-2100) changes in agricultural land management, climate, and atmospheric CO2 have affected and will affect ecosystem structure and functioning in the Midwest U.S. region. The goals are to quantify changes in regional-scale carbon, water, and energy cycling, highlighting shifts in potential vegetation distribution and the availability of ecosystem goods and services (e.g., crop yields, forest/grassland productivity, and freshwater availability). The approach uses a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM; Agro-IBIS), which includes detailed representation of agro-ecosystems for the U.S.

Impacts of Historical Changes in Climate and Atmospheric CO2 on Wisconsin Agriculture – Kucharik and UW-Madison Forest Ecology graduate student Shawn Serbin developed a multi-decadal, high-resolution gridded (8 km) daily record of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation observations across Wisconsin for the 1950 to 2006 period. These data were used in conjunction with U.S. Department of Agriculture county level yield information to quantify statistical relationships between seasonal weather indices and corn and soybean yields for 1950-2006 to determine how climate change and weather variability have contributed to trends and variability in corn and soybean yields across the state. Funding from Wisconsin Focus on Energy.

Impacts of Localized Urban Expansion on Climate Regulation – Kucharik and Schneider are evaluating how urbanization directly impacts local to regional climate across agricultural regions by studying connections between land-use/land-cover and energy balance using an agro-ecosystem model (Agro-IBIS) driven with remotely sensed observations and climate data at high resolution.

Impacts of regional land cover change on atmospheric boundary layer properties in global agricultural regions (Desai)
SAGE Ph.D student: Justin Bagley
Funding source: NSF
Collaborators: Jon Foley, Paul West, University of Minnesota
Description: Justin's Ph.D. work focuses on evaluation and development of modeling tools to quantify the impact of land cover change on regional surface climate. Our group has developed a novel parameterized coupled ecosystem-lower atmosphere model of vegetation and atmospheric flow that allows us to run them in an ensemble mode and test a large variety of land use scenarios on personal computers.

Investigating the Relationship Between Land Use/Land Cover Change, Hydrologic Cycle, and Climate in Semi-Arid Central Asia – In collaboration with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography in PRC, Ozdogan and his students are processing satellite data to map changes in agricultural area, implementing a simple evapotranspiration model, and testing a groundwater model specifically suited for predicting the locations of recharge and discharge areas in semi-arid Central Asia.

Monitoring the Water Cycle in the Arab Region Using NASA Satellite and Data Assimilating Model Technology – As a Co-Investigator in a joint NASA-USAID project, Ozdogan aids the development of a Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS) for the Arab region. His specific role is to assemble an up-to-date database of irrigated area and crop types to drive a suite of advanced land surface models, with the goal of providing optimal estimates of hydrological states and fluxes relevant to water resources in the region.

Monitoring Urban Land Surface Properties for Global Climate Models – Schneider collaborates with Professor Mark Friedl (Boston University) to develop and test a new global database of urban land cover characteristics (e.g. fractional amounts of built-up land, vegetation type and canopy coverage, and irrigation presence) by exploiting decision tree methods developed within the machine learning community and remotely sensed observations from moderate to coarse resolution sensors.

Quantifying carbon sequestration in Midwest US bioenergy cropping systems: scaling CO2 fluxes from leaf-level to landscapes
Lead PI: Chris Kucharik
UW Collaborators: Michael Cruse (Env/Resources PhD student, based in Agronomy), Randy Jackson (UW Agronomy)
Funding source: USDA Hatch
SAGE Students: none
Project description: Kucharik and colleagues are studying how a land-use shift to planting more perennial grasses such as switchgrass or fast growing trees like hybrid poplar to support cellulosic ethanol production could sequester large quantities of carbon (C) back into vegetation and soils. This would support ecosystem sustainability while providing a new income stream to farmers via participation in C-crediting programs. However, we currently lack the necessary field observations to verify that C-sequestration is occurring. To address this shortcoming, Kucharik and colleagues are quantifying the C sequestration potential associated with three cropping system monocultures in the Arlington, WI region (continuous corn, switchgrass, and hybrid poplar) that are known for biomass production potential. They are coupling field measurements of leaf area index, soil temperature and moisture, soil CO2 respiration, and CO2 uptake by vegetation with a theoretical approach to scale leaf-level CO2 fluxes to the landscape scale to quantify the net ecosystem exchange of CO2. The study sites are associated with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial (WICST). The field observations will be used to validate an agroecosystem model (Agro-IBIS) to support future studies of ecosystem service trade-offs associated with bioenergy crops.

Quantifying Climate Regulation by Ecosystems – West, Barford, and Kucharik are developing approaches for making quick, first-order estimates of the influence on land use change on regional climate. This research is done in collaboration Gemma Narisma from Ateneo de Manila University and Jon Foley from the University of Minnesota.  Funding provided by The McDonnell Foundation and NASA.

The Role of Irrigated Croplands in North American Hydroclimatic Regimes – Ozdogan and his colleagues at NASA GSFC are quantifying the effects of cropland irrigation on water and energy cycle variables over North America. Funded by NOAA, the goal of this research is to investigate irrigation's influences on the land-atmosphere interactions at regional scales with an eye towards improved initialization of land surface moisture and energy states in numerical weather prediction models.

Publications

Bagley, J., Desai, A.R., West, P.C., and Foley, J.A. (2011). A simple, minimal parameter model for predicting the influence of changing land cover on the land-atmosphere system. Earth Interactions, in press, doi:10.1175/2011EI394.1.

Nemet, G.F. and A. R. Brandt (forthcoming, 2012). "Willingness to pay for a climate backstop: liquid fuel producers and direct CO2 air capture." The Energy Journal 33(1): 53--82.

Rasmussen, D.M., Jr., T. Holloway, and G.F. Nemet (2011). Opportunities and challenges in assessing climate change impacts on wind energy – a critical comparison of wind speed projections in California. Environmental Research Letters 6, 024008, doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/6/2/024008 (Article)

Sacks, W.J. and C.J. Kucharik (2011).  Trends in crop management and phenology in the U.S. Corn Belt, and impacts on yields, evapotranspiration, and energy balance. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2011.02.010 (Article)

Updated: 11/15/11

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