Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 11-20 of 47 Results
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Edgar Wiggin Francisco V
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2023
BioI research how land use change affects species interactions, invasions, and biodiversity in tropical forests. I primarily work with reptiles and amphibians to investigate the following questions:
How can we integrate habitat requirements for vulnerable and range-restricted species into the agroecological matrix?
How do evolved ecological constraints mediate species’ vulnerability or resiliency to anthropogenic disturbances?
How can land use change influence biological invasions?
Currently, my research is part of a grander effort to understand the social and ecological consequences of expanding oil palm agriculture in Costa Rica. I am additionally interested in sustainable agriculture, food sovereignty, and the political ecology of agribusiness in Latin America. -
Anna Gomes
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2020
BioMy main interests lie within anthropogenic climate change, environmental science, and agriculture. The complex system dynamics and interconnections between agriculture and the environment including nutrient cycling, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions are a few of the most critical challenges for today's soil scientists. After completing a master’s degree in Sustainability Science and Environmental Studies at Lund University in Sweden, researching farmer adoption of practices which mitigate GHGs from arable soils in the Netherlands at Wageningen University, I started a PhD in Earth System Science at Stanford University, aiming to focus on soil and environmental biogeochemistry. In parallel to my work in academia, I have been working on a start-up to address food waste and food insecurity in CA (Ugly Food Market), in addition to being a team member on several projects including a sharing library (Circle Centre), a soil science educational platform (Soil Life), and other sustainability related initiatives.
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Andrew Hennig
Ph.D. Student in Earth System Science, admitted Autumn 2016
BioAntarctic ice sheet, both of which have exhibited significant mass loss over the past few decades. If the two ice sheets were to fully collapse, they could be responsible for up to 15m of global sea level rise (roughly equal parts from both). This sea level rise would not only pose serious problems for coastal settlements, but cause serious changes to ecosystems, and could profoundly alter the Earth’s ocean circulation.
Current estimates of the mass balance for ice sheets are based primarily on satellite data. This data has become more accurate and more available than ever before, since the 1990s. While estimates can be provided by satellite data, satellites are limited by virtue of the fact that they can only evaluate the surface of the ice shelf. Recent research has shown that a significant amount of the mass loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet is happening underwater, along grounding lines, where deep waters, warmed by global warming, enter the area underneath the ice shelf, and melt the shelves from the bottom. This not only results in mass loss directly, but increases calving of glaciers into the ocean, further accelerating their loss. This melting, below the surface of the ice shelves, cannot be estimated by satellites.
To get a better understanding of the impact of warmer deep waters on glacial retreat in Western Antarctica, we need to measure the melt more directly. Using highly precise measurements of salinity and isotopic composition of seawater in coastal regions of Western Antarctica, we can estimate the amount of glacial meltwater present in the oceanic adjacent to ice sheets. Gaining a greater understanding of the rates and locations of West Antarctic melting will be crucial to developing our understanding of future sea level rise, and other wider impacts.
