Climate Change Initiative pools finding of various researchers

By: Nick Ngo

Posted: 8/31/07

Climate change research has existed at OSU through a variety of different studies; however, there has never been any thing linking them together.

Through the combination of an interest in climate change and the passing of a House bill, establishing a climate change research institute, OSU faculty and researchers came up with the Climate Change Initiative - a group based on an agreement to collaborate and communicate with one another about their climate change research.

The Climate Change Initiative is made up of different people on campus working and researching various aspects of climate change. Some of these include investigating how climate affects ecosystems or looking at the history of climate changes affecting the Northwest.

Nick Pisias, a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, is in charge of spear-heading the initiative.

He led a workshop on June 14 and 15 to organize all those interested in climate change. More then 120 scientists attended the workshop. Those who attended represented different colleges at OSU such as COAS, the Colleges of Liberal Arts, Forestry and Engineering.

"It was a very large comprehensive group of people representing various aspects of OSU," said Peter Clark, a professor in geosciences.

Clark said the research in climate change at OSU is extremely strong but there's no formal organization that allows people to collaborate across campus.

"The purpose of this is to try to bring everybody together in a coordinated way," Clark said. "To bring all the expertise together and collaborate on a number of issues relating to climate change."

The initiative is meant to help make research more recognizable and to bring new ideas to the table. Clark said this could only be done through communication. However, the Climate Change Initiative is not meant to group everybody into one big project.

"The idea is to think about new ways for people in Forestry to talk to people in COAS for new ways of researching climate change," Clark said.

Through communication and information sharing, Clark said they can think about new ideas about studying climate change and getting research funding.

Interest in climate change wasn't the only force that fueled the start of the Climate Change Initiative, other factors were in play as well.

Barbara Bond, associate professor of forest science, said the initiative was also spurred by the passing of a bill in the Oregon Senate.

H.B. 3543 was passed by the House and Senate in June. Bond said H.B. 3543 was a three part bill about Oregon's environment. The first part pertained to greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, the second part of the bill was about the Oregon Global Warming Commission, the third part established the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute - which helped start the Climate Change Initiative at OSU.

According to the bill the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute's purpose is to "facilitate research by Oregon University System faculty on climate change and its affects on natural and human systems in Oregon."

Gail Achterman, director of the Institute of Natural Resources, said "the state created a research institute on climate change that can address and synthesize climate science that's understandable to Oregonians."

The research institute will be housed at OSU and would be holding faculty from around the state. The institute will receive research funding of $180,000 every two years.

"By research standards, it's a small amount but good enough to get things started," Bond said.

Bond said the initiative is different from the institute.

"Hypothetically," Bond said, "the initiative would try to have more of an interdisciplinary curriculum. It won't only involve research, education would also be a component.

The initiative is still not yet a formal organization. A report from the workshop, held in June, has been submitted to the administration.