Duke to Oversee Selection of New Energy Department Climate Change Research Projects in Southeastern U.S.

Part of nationwide program to fund research on the effects of climate change on ecosystems and the atmosphere

Monday, August 1, 2005

Durham, N.C. -- Duke University has been chosen to administer a new U.S. Department of Energy program that will distribute about $10 million to universities and other institutions in the Southeast for climate change research during the next five years, Duke and energy department officials have announced.

Duke's Center on Global Change will host one of four regional centers for the energy department's new National Institute for Climate Change Research (NICCR) that will fund research nationwide on the effects of climate change on ecosystems and the atmosphere, the officials said. The Duke center will be responsible for selecting and coordinating such NICCR-sponsored research studies in an 11-state area stretching from North Carolina to Texas.

The new regional research funding program "allows us to think more broadly about global change," said Robert Jackson, a professor in Duke’s Department of Biology and Nicholas School of the Environment & Earth Sciences.

"It also puts Duke in a position to help set research priorities for global change studies in the Southeast," said Jackson, who is faculty director of the Center on Global Change.

Duke's Center on Global Change was created by the university's provost office to encourage interdisciplinary research on topics such as global warming and shifts in land use and urbanization. The new NICCR initiative will give the center "a new focused purpose," Jackson said.

Duke competed with many other universities to host the NICCR regional center for the Southeast. Other NICCR regional centers are at Pennsylvania State University, Michigan Technological University and Northern Arizona University.

In addition to the distributed research funding, Duke and the other regional centers will each receive $1 million over five years to administer their part of the institute program.

Scientists at all four host universities will be eligible to join other investigators in their regions in competing for energy department research support. But energy department guidelines limit host institution researchers to a maximum of 25 percent of available regional funding.

"In our region, that means that other institutions will receive at least $7 1/2 million out of $10 million," said Jackson, who has been previously funded by the energy department.

Eligible research proposals during the current fiscal year will include studies of the effects of warming, altered precipitation, elevated carbon dioxide or elevated ozone concentrations on land ecosystems "of regional or national importance."

Also eligible are projects to create new computer models that can predict the effects of climate change on regional land ecosystems, as well as new ways to evaluate interactions between such ecosystems and the atmosphere.

Most scientists have concluded that human activities, such as the production of extra amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, are altering Earth's climate. Jackson wrote about the subject in his 2002 book, “The Earth Remains Forever” .

Duke already receives significant energy department funding for similar studies -- notably major support for the Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) project . Scientists at FACE are studying how elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels expected generally by mid-century affect a growing loblolly pine forest ecosystem near the university.

In evaluating applications for NICCR funding, Jackson said he will interact with other universities and institutions in the region, such as the energy department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "We need input from outside of Duke to support the best possible research for our region," he said.