Research at the Earth Institute is organized into nine themes. Ecosystems Health and Monitoring is one of them.
Ecosystems, and the tremendous diversity of species they contain, are critical to the survival of the global economy, and to life on Earth. They maintain the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink; help stabilize the climate; prevent and mitigate natural disasters like erosion and floods; and provide food, both directly through the production of fruit and other products and indirectly through the support of insects that pollinate our crops.
But ecosystems are at risk, threatened by a growing human population and its increasing consumption of natural resources. The Earth Institute is working to better understand the nature of ecosystems, monitor the ways in which they are changing, and develop new strategies to protect them so that we can all become better stewards of the Earth.
Featured Projects
Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Earth Institute, Columbia University
The Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is leading a collaborative Earth Institute initiative, which includes partners such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to reduce poverty and natural disaster vulnerability in Haiti. The initiative is focusing on ecosystem restoration and sustainable resource management. The pilot program, part of an anticipated 20-year project for the entire country of Haiti, began with baseline assessments in river basins of the southern peninsula. The goal is to provide a platform for designing and coordinating integrated watershed management programs, which restore a sustainable flow of ecosystem services: erosion management, improved agricultural production, and increased access to clean water. Ecosystem interventions could also reduce risk associated with hurricanes and flooding. In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, CIESIN is integrating fieldwork with post-disaster reconstruction and long-term development of the country’s urban and rural areas. Read more about the Earth Institute’s Haiti Regenerative Initiative on the project’s Web site.
Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC)
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B)
Funded by the National Science Foundation, E3B's TraitNet is dedicated to the advancement and integration of trait-based evolutionary and ecological research. Traits are variously defined, but essentially concern species' properties that affect individual fitness and govern species' impacts and responses to their environment. Trait-based research spans an enormous array of ecological and evolutionary disciplines. While each discipline has sought to define traits, apply trait data to test theory, establish protocols for the quantification of traits, and build multi-user databases, little coordination or interaction has occurred across disciplines. TraitNet addresses the extraordinary opportunity to facilitate integration and synthesis across this array of disciplines. TraitNet was developed by Professor Shahid Naeem at E3B and Daniel Bunker, assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
CERC, E3B and other collaborators, mainly from the Earth Institute, are working to structure TraitNet around the design of a prototypical universal trait database: TraitBank. The concept of TraitBank is based on GenBank, a bioinformatic resource for molecular biology and biotechnology that has advanced basic research and medical technology, and triggered major initiatives like the Human Genome project. Similarly, TraitBank, can become an extraordinary resource for research, innovation and global environmental problem solving.
Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC)
Over the past two decades, pandemics like H1N1, avian flu and SARS, as well as a reemergence of incidences of malaria, cholera and schistosomiasis, have reignited concern over infectious diseases and brought to the forefront the connection between human and ecological health. Anthropological impacts on ecosystems are recognized as a leading factor in the increased prevalence of pathogenic diseases in humans and wildlife. At large scales, highly diverse, intact ecosystems have low variability in biotic composition and levels of ecosystem functioning, but once ecosystems are altered by modern-day drivers of change, the stability of these systems (including their resistance and resilience to disease) declines dramatically. The link between ecological and human health is especially evident in developing countries where communities are highly reliant on the natural world for their livelihoods.
To address these complex challenges, scientists need to work at the interface between human and ecosystem health and utilize interdisciplinary analysis of ecology, anthropology, population genetics and epidemiology. The Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), in collaboration with partners at the Earth Institute, studies the links between ecosystems, climate and the spread of certain diseases, particularly infectious diseases. For instance, CERC's "Malaria in the Peruvian Amazon" project studies the human demographic shifts, development initiatives and landscape fragmentation underlying the endemicity of malaria in the Iquitos region of the Peruvian Amazon. Wildlife Trust and the Wildlife Conservation Society, CERC's partners, are world leaders on the issue of emerging infectious diseases as they relate to wildlife.
Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC)
Since the 1990s, CERC has been building the Amazonian Family Forestry Program (AFFP) in partnership with local researchers, governments and nongovernmental development agencies based in Amazonia. Development of family-based forest management techniques and systems for timber and non-timber resources through the AFFP is helping not only to reverse deforestation and increase forest cover, it is enhancing local livelihoods and raising incomes of rural families by promoting profitable and sustainable forest production.
Currently, CERC is engaged in demonstration and training activities to disseminate the best forestry practices and to translate such practices into policies that can help regional and local governments promote the sustainable production of timber and other products.
Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Environmental indicators are used in strategic environmental protection planning to guide resource allocation for environmental remediation and public health, and to assess relative progress toward more sustainable natural and managed environmental systems. The Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), in partnership with the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP), has pioneered the development of a range of environmental indicators at both national and sub-national levels.
Highlights of project activity include the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), which measures relative national progress toward sustainability; the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) which focuses on more specific national-level environmental outcomes relative to internationally recognized targets; and the Natural Resource Management Index (NRMI), which assesses specific factors affecting the sustainable management of natural resources and is used by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) as one of 17 selection indicators in determining country eligibility for MCC program assistance.
Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
A Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) project will test the use of NASA satellite data to develop environmental indicators with improved spatial and temporal coverage. These will be used in decision making by the U.S. and foreign governments and agencies such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Bank. The project will focus on two areas with significant data gaps: air quality and coastal water quality. Project partners include scientists from Battelle Memorial Institute, NASA, NOAA, EPA and the European Union.
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)
Center for Rivers and Estuaries
The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Center for Rivers and Estuaries are expanding their ecosystems monitoring program called the Lamont Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Observation Project (LACOP). LACOP is made up of a network of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring stations and provides real-time CO2 and meteorological data for researchers, students, the general public and policymakers. The data can be used for a variety of purposes, including the correlation of short- and long-term climate and CO2 information with changes in local and regional ecosystems.
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