Stanford University
Showing 1-10 of 33 Results
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Paul Berne Burow
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioI am a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University. My research examines the cultural dimensions of climate and land use change in North America, with a focus on how Indigenous peoples and rural communities experience, adapt to, and shape environmental change on the landscapes they call home. I work at the intersection of environmental anthropology, Indigenous environmental sciences, cultural ecology, and human-environment geography, using mixed methods that span ethnography, interviews, focus group discussions, household surveys, community science, archival research, and spatial analysis.
My current projects investigate collaborative forest stewardship with Tribal Nations and federal land management agencies in the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin regions of California and Nevada. This work examines how Indigenous knowledge, cultural values, and governance institutions shape the effectiveness of shared stewardship approaches and their outcomes for ecosystem health and community well-being. I also lead research into how forest-adjacent communities value and use forest ecosystems, and I am developing a new planning framework for integrating cultural ecosystem services into forest management decision-making. My book manuscript, Good Country: Land Stewardship and Belonging in the American West, examines the cultural politics of environmental change through the experiences of Paiute communities, federal land managers, and livestock ranchers navigating ecological transformation in the rural West.
My research program is organized around three interconnected lines of inquiry: understanding the nature of climate impacts on vulnerable, frontline communities; identifying the institutional barriers and enablers that shape equitable climate adaptation; and advancing community-led approaches to building climate-resilient landscapes. Through long-term, community-engaged partnerships with Tribal Nations, I work to expand Indigenous-led stewardship of ancestral homelands, co-produce knowledge that supports cultural revitalization and landscape resilience, and inform more just approaches to climate adaptation and public lands policy. -
Pablo Busch
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioDr. Pablo Busch is an interdisciplinary researcher with training in industrial and environmental engineering, public policy, energy systems, industrial ecology, and statistics. His research broadly focuses on scientific analyses to support a clean energy transition, and to help identify risks to equity and sustainability in the emerging energy transition mineral supply chain. Pablo's main research goal is to conduct scientific analysis to diverse environmental and climate change problems, and to translate key insights from research into a digestible and actionable format for decision-making. His research is fueled by tools from engineering, statistics, geographic information systems, economics and public policy.
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Xinyu Dou
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioStanford Energy Fellow
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Melanie Gittard
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am an applied environmental and development economist studying the impacts of climate change and water pollution in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Alex Hedgpeth
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioAlexandra Hedgpeth is a biogeochemist whose research explores how soil carbon cycling in peatlands responds to environmental change. Her work focuses on understanding the mechanisms that regulate carbon storage and greenhouse gas production in both tropical and boreal wetlands, with a particular emphasis on the vulnerability of deep, ancient carbon to modern surface inputs and hydrologic shifts.
Through her Ph.D. research at the University of California, Los Angeles, Alex has developed and applied novel isotopic and geochemical approaches—including implementing radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analyses, and high-resolution molecular characterization—to trace the sources and fates of carbon in peat soils. Her fieldwork spans a range of ecosystems, from ombrotrophic bogs in the Arctic to saturated tropical peat domes in Central America. This comparative framework allows her to identify unifying controls on carbon preservation and loss across climate zones.
Alex's research integrates field measurements, laboratory experiments, and synthesis of global datasets. She is a key contributor to multi-institutional efforts to model peatland carbon cycling under climate change scenarios, including DOE- and NSF-supported initiatives. Her work helps clarify the role of peatlands as both long-term carbon sinks and potential sources of atmospheric CO₂ and CH₄ under future disturbance.
In addition to her scientific contributions, Alex is committed to collaborative, interdisciplinary research and has worked closely with partners at national laboratories, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and international data synthesis networks. She is especially interested in questions with high uncertainty and high relevance to climate feedbacks—such as thresholds in biogeochemical function and the persistence of deep soil carbon under hydrologic change. -
Alexander Honeyman
Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science
BioI work at the intersections of data science, field work, laboratory experimentation, biogeochemistry, and microbial ecology. I was exposed to the issue of wildland fire through 10 years of experience as a volunteer firefighter / EMT in Colorado (fire / rescue / EMS). My current work involves investigating the geochemical character of wildfire smoke by hybridizing analyses of physical samples with various geospatial datasets and atmospheric particle transport models. I love working in environmental systems because they are complex, and offer numerous opportunities to blend the physical and computational sciences.
