IBES Postdoc Sonam Futi Sherpa contributed to this study, which finds that all of the 28 most populous U.S. cities are sinking.
Institute at Brown for Environment and Society
2025 News
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Climate conversations came to life at IBES this semester as thought leaders, students, and changemakers gathered to exchange ideas, share stories, and shape real-world solutions.
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Teeming Earth
IBES and History Associate Professor Bathsheba Demuth reviewed Ferris Jabr’s “Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life.”
Los Angeles Review of Books
Listening to the Nonhuman World: On Including Other Life-Forms in Politics
This article considers recent books on the political rights of nonhuman beings, including “Eco-Emancipation: An Earthly Politics of Freedom” by Sharon Krause, an IBES affiliate and professor of political science.
IBES Director Kim Cobb is among the eight Brown faculty members elected to the AAAS.
Yajima explores how farming and development are reshaping toad breeding patterns, uncovering key insights into the broader impact on natural habitats.
April 29, 2025
News from Brown
New center at Brown to study the intersection of climate, environment and human health
During a campus conversation to celebrate the launch of the Center for Climate, Environment and Health, panelists explored the impacts of climate change on human health and the research that will drive life-saving solutions.
Four recently awarded working groups bring a new, interdisciplinary, and engaged approach to climate solutions.
IBES Fellow Baylor Fox-Kemper discussed how climate change impacts the ocean and how Rhode Island communities can better prepare for conditions that could negatively impact water utilities.
Harold Ward, the father of the environmental studies program at Brown, passed away on in December 2024 at the age of 89.
Brown Division of Research
2025 Research Achievement Awardees
IBES Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra received this year's Early Career Research Achievement Award in the Physical Sciences.
Visiting IBES Professor Robert Brulle offered commentary for this article.
IBES Professor Stephen Porder spoke to Colleen Cronin '21 about the effects of recent federal funding cuts.
April 23, 2025
News from Brown
Brown scholars elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
With their election to the prestigious honor society, eight members of the Brown University faculty join the nation’s leading scholars in science, public affairs, business, arts and the humanities.
American Lung Association
2025 State of the Air Report: Air Quality Worsens in Providence Metro Area Due to Wildfire Smoke
Members of the IBES-housed Breathe Providence project offered commentary for this press release.
April 22, 2025
News from Brown
Staff Spotlight: Sowing more than seedlings, Nicholas Vasques cultivates learning and research
As Brown’s research greenhouse manager, Vasques tends the Plant Environmental Center run by the University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology.
April 22, 2025
News from Brown
Video: Brown biologist Stephen Porder on taking purposeful, planet-positive personal steps
This Earth Day, Brown University’s associate provost for sustainability offers strategies to minimize carbon dioxide emissions and help mitigate climate change.
IBES Affiliate Mark Blyth penned this opinion piece with Visiting Scholar Nicolò Fraccaroli.
Chemical & Engineering News
Scientists face deficiencies in leadership countering US policies
IBES and Sociology Professor Scott Frickel offered commentary for this article.
IBES’ founding director joins global leaders to help shape a new framework for sustainable and just governance in the Arctic.
Brown Alumni Magazine
Bite-Sizing Climate Action
"Possibly" – IBES' podcast with the Public's Radio – fights climate-change overwhelm, one “let’s break this down” episode at a time.
The Washington Post
Trump’s new reason for canceling grants: ‘Climate anxiety’
“The answer to rising levels of climate anxiety is to meet the moment with robust and durable evidence-based solutions,” IBES Director Kim Cobb told The Washington Post. “It’s not to stick our heads in the sand.”
The Atlantic
America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era
Corwin Zigler — a biostatistics professor and IBES affiliate who served on an EPA scientific advisory panel on air pollution under the Biden administration — provided commentary for this article.
The Brown Daily Herald
What Brown experts, RI officials think about the EPA’s planned climate rollbacks
IBES Professors Kim Cobb, Scott Frickel, and Meredith Hastings offered commentary for this article, condemning the rollback of federal environmental oversight.
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Growing sustainable capitalism: The environmental politics of agri-tech in Singapore
This article, written by Voss Postdoc Vanessa Koh, examines the nexus of the emergence of the agri-tech ecosystem in Singapore and concerns over climate change.
Siddapureddy, a senior concentrating in ecology, explores the impact of invasive trees to understand climate change.
Kurt Pennell — an engineering professor, IBES fellow, and groundwater remediation expert — offered input during an October 2024 meeting to review the environmental impacts of the the Massachusetts Army National Guard's controversial proposal for a machine gun range on Joint Base Cape Cod.
With the help of an IBES Catalyst Research Award, affiliate faculty member Erica Walker and her Community Noise Lab will launch a free, self-paced online summer environmental health and science program for middle school students in Jackson, Mississippi.
March 24, 2025
News from Brown
New research helps reconstruct sudden, dramatic sea level rise after last ice age
By determining which ice sheets melted to create a colossal increase in sea levels 14,500 years ago, scientists hope to enable better predictions of how current ice melting will affect levels around the world.
Nature Climate Change
Improving future climate meetings
Jennifer Hadden, an IBES affiliate at the Watson Institute, penned with article alongside Aseem Prakash of the University of Washington.
IBES affiliate Jerome Robinson, an associate professor of chemistry, discussed STEM Day at Brown — an initiative he leads for local high schoolers.
News from IBES
Brown Climate Study Named Finalist for PNAS Cozzarelli Prize
Professor Dov Sax and fellow researchers received recognition for their IBES-supported study challenging traditional forecasting methods for the impacts of climate change on species.
Citizens' Climate Lobby
Can Talking About Climate Change Reduce Anxiety?
This episode of Citizens’ Climate Radio features insights from Kate Schapira, an IBES affiliate in the Department of English.
Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry
A Long-Lasting, High-Stability Reactor System for Compound-Specific Carbon Isotope Analyses
IBES Fellow Yonsong Huang and former IBES postdoc Bumsoo Kim are among the authors of this study.
"Extreme weather events, made more frequent and intense by climate change, pose a clear and present danger to our education system," said affiliate faculty member Matthew Kraft.
March 13, 2025
News from Brown
Brown launches new master’s degree program in sustainable energy
Combining cutting-edge science, technology and engineering education with economic and policy instruction, the on-campus program will prepare students to be change-makers in the global transition to renewable energy.
Members of Assistant Professor Dan Ibarra's lab, including graduate affiliate Riley Havel, who was interviewed for this piece, identified a meteorite that landed in a carton of ice cream in Pennsylvania.
News from IBES
Climate investor Tom Steyer kicks off 2025 FSIcon
The fight for renewable energy can be won in the marketplace, Steyer argued during a moderated keynote address.
Swearer Center for Public Service
Trees, Heat and Human Health
This article highlights the engaged work that three ENVS concentrators are conducting to increase tree equity in Providence and bolster community health.
Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry
Determination of KGa-1b and SHCa-1 Δ′17O and δ18O via Laser Fluorination of Lithium Fluoride Clay Pellets
This study was conducted by members of Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra's lab, including an IBES postdoc and graduate affiliates.
The Brown Daily Herald
What’s next for the economy? Billionaire Tom Steyer says it should be renewable energy.
IBES Director introduced Steyer as a “force of nature” in her opening remarks, describing him as “somebody who has taken all of their chips and gone all in on climate.”
Researchers from Brown, including IBES Associate Professor Tyler Kartiznel, contributed to a study that found giraffes' gut microbiome is more closely tied to the giraffe’s species than to the specific plants it consumes.
The New York Times
Hit by ‘Gut Punches,’ Scientists Band Together to Protest Trump
IBES and Sociology Professor Scott Frickel offered commentary about the tradition of science activism.
Brown, an Environmental Sciences & Studies concentrator, analyzes coral skeletons to reconstruct historical El Niño patterns and inform modern climate models.
The Providence Journal
Can RI force fossil fuel companies to pay for climate change? Here's how.
IBES Professor Timmons Roberts noted that fossil fuel companies have "buried the negative impacts of their product like the tobacco companies did."
Kim Cobb offered commentary on the scientific evidence that climate change is harming people and the planet.
Uppsala University
Unexpected discoveries in study of giraffe gut flora
Past and present members of Associate Professor Tyler Karzinel's lab analyzed the link between diet and gut flora in three giraffe species.
National Parks Traveler
Working To Preserve Cashes Ledge, 'Yellowstone Of The North Atlantic'
IBES Fellow and Biology Professor Jon Witman, who has studied Cashes Ledge since 1977, offered commentary for this article.
“We really need an educated workforce who can understand what’s going on (and) how to transform from a historically carbon-based economy to a decarbonized economy,” said Nitin Padture, an IBES faculty affiliate and the director of the Initiative for Sustainable Energy.
IBES and DEEPS Professor Amanda Lynch offered commentary for this article.
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