From butterflies to freshwater supplies

Stanford Institute for the Environment awards new round of research grants

The Stanford Institute for the Environment (SIE) has awarded a second round of Environmental Interdisciplinary Initiatives grants to 17 members of the Stanford University faculty. Five projects, from the re-introduction of a local butterfly species to an assessment of groundwater privatization in India, will receive a total of $640,408 over the next two years. Each project involves the collaboration of two to six Stanford faculty members representing a broad range of fields, including earth sciences, education, biological sciences, economics and history.

The grants are designed to encourage campus-wide collaborative research in areas such as environmental ethics and risk analysis, energy and global change, conservation science and policy, sustainable land use, and marine and freshwater ecology.

''We received a total of 29 letters of intent from faculty, many of whom had not been active in the institute to date,'' said institute director Jeffrey Koseff, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. ''We were particularly pleased to receive proposals from a broad set of applicants including faculty from the social sciences and the humanities.''

A 14-member committee representing the major schools, disciplines and programs on campus reviewed each letter, and 10 finalists were then selected for submission as full proposals.

''Although we were not able to fund all the ideas generated through the formal grant proposal process, the institute continues to welcome ideas for innovative, interdisciplinary research,'' said Barton H. ''Buzz'' Thompson Jr., the Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law who is also an institute director.

The following five proposals will receive an average grant of $128,000 from 2005 to 2007:

''Feasibility Study: Reintroduction of the Bay Checkerspot Butterfly to Stanford University Lands,'' Paul Ehrlich, Carol Boggs and Chris Field, Department of Biological Sciences; Scott Fendorf, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences; Barton Thompson Jr., Stanford Law School; and Richard White, Department of History.
''An Economic Incentives Model for California Water Markets,'' Thomas Weber and James Sweeney, Department of Management Science and Engineering; David Freyberg, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Barton Thompson Jr., Law School.
''An Interdisciplinary Assessment of an Agricultural-Urban Water Market in Southern India: Physical Impacts, Welfare Consequences, and Policy Implications,'' Steven Gorelick, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and Department of Geophysics; and Lawrence Goulder, Department of Economics.
''Mineral Dust Components in Aerosols and Their Effect on Ocean Productivity,'' Adina Paytan and Scott Fendorf, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences; Mark Jacobson, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Richard Shavelson, School of Education.
''Carbon Dioxide Sequestration by Forests: The Importance of Cation and Phosphorous Limitation and Its Relationship to Landscape Evolution,'' George Hilley and C. Page Chamberlain, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences; Peter Vitousek, Department of Biological Sciences.

For details of each project, visit the institute's website at http://environment.stanford.edu.

The institute promotes interdisciplinary research on pressing environmental issues that underlie peace, prosperity and health for humanity and the natural systems that sustain life on Earth. Through its work at the intersection of science, technology and policy, health, business and the humanities, the institute fosters the development of creative, working solutions to environmental challenges; works with key public and private leaders to ensure the implementation of these solutions; trains and educates the next generation of environmental leaders and problem solvers; and engages the broader community to increase public understanding of environmental problems and solutions.

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By Mark Shwartz

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