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 second year of the Climate Leadership Challenge (CLC), with up to $100 in prizes for students involved. 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. 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

Clara Arias, Justin Bagley, Keith Cronin, Dr. Eungul Lee, Rachel Licker, Dr. Meiyun Lin, Kelly Logan, Melissa Motew, Sarah Olson, Steve Plachinski, Bill Sacks, Dr. Yongjia Song, Chris Uejio, Paul West, Yang Yang.

Ongoing Projects

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.

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.

Impacts of Climate Change on Ground-level Ozone – 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.

Impacts of Climate Change on Mercury Chemistry – 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. – 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. Funding from the Department of Energy's National Institute on Climate Change Research (NICCR).

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, Schneider and grad student Kelly Logan 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.

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 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.

Understanding the Demographic Implications of Climate Change – Schneider and collaborator Katherine Curtis (Department of Rural Sociology, Center for Demography and Ecology) investigate the role of spatial variability in time-correlated climate and population projections. 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.

Updated: 11/19/09

SAGE is a Research Center of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

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