Published Research | Institute at Brown for Environment and Society

August 25, 2026 Climate and Development Lab

Climate Superfund Bills in the U.S. States: A systematic study of opposition

This report — led by IBES researchers including Professor Timmons Roberts, Trevor Culhane, and August DeVore — shows how fossil fuel and energy-intensive industries work to block “Climate Superfund” bills across state legislatures.

August 14, 2026 Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology

Non-analog ostracod assemblages in Lake Mojave reflect lake Quaternary climate and water-level changes

IBES and DEEPS Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra is among the authors of this study.

August 11, 2026 PNAS

US schools’ proximity to environmental hazard sites: A national analysis

IBES affiliate and Catalyst Research Awardee Matthew Kraft, a professor in the Department of Education, and his SustainableED team authored this study, finding that 44% of pre-K-12 schools in the U.S. are within a mile of a known environmental hazard site.

July 28, 2026 Nature Scientific Data

The NASA ABoVE Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor full waveform LiDAR airborne surveys

Professor Laurence C. Smith is among the authors of this data descriptor publication.

July 27, 2026 Journal of Participatory Research Methods

Do You See What I Smell? A Participatory Visual Arts Method for Documenting Residents’ Experiences With Odors in Providence, Rhode Island

Members of IBES' Breathe Providence project, including Professor Meredith Hastings, contributed to this paper, which draws on the work of the Breathe Providence Resident Task Force and provides practical guidance about the use of collage in community-engaged action research.

July 18, 2026 Quaternary Science Reviews

Paleohydrologic conditions in the Mojave Desert during the last deglaciation recorded by core-to-shore lacustrine records

Postdoc Gavin Piccione led this study, with contributions from Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra, IBES graduate affiliate Justin Custado, and former undergraduate Voss Fellow Anna Dubey '25.

July 6, 2026 Nature Sustainable Agriculture

A digital soil mapping approach to soil carbon monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV)

Professor James Kellner is among the authors of this paper.

June 16, 2026 PNAS Nexus

Unified climate factors predict influenza outbreak seasonality across tropical and temperate regions

IBES and Epidemiology Assistant Professor Rachel Baker contributed to this paper, led by graduate affiliate Aleksandra Stamper.

June 6, 2026 Geophysical Research Letters

Global Glacial Rock Weathering Signature Depends on Competing Contributions From Ice Sheets and Alpine Glaciers

IBES Professors Daniel Ibarra and Laurence C. Smith, postdoc Gavin Piccione, and graduate affiliates Sebastian Muñoz and Sarah Esenther are among the authors of this modeling paper.

May 20, 2026 Nature Medicine

Climate change and infectious diseases

Rachel Baker, an assistant professor in IBES and the Department of Epidemiology, and Aleksandra Stamper, an IBES graduate affiliate in the School of Public Health, are the first and second authors, respectively, of this review paper.

May 20, 2026 Nature Communications

Revealing the Antarctic marginal ice zone with a decade-long wave-in-ice climatology

IBES faculty affilate (DEEPS) and former Voss postdoc Christopher Horvat is among the authors of this study.

May 13, 2026 Nature Scientific Reports

Investigating medicinal resource combinations in the Bornean orangutan diet

Voss Postdoctoral Research Associate in Environment and Society Elodie Freymann co-authored this paper.

April 28, 2026 Agriculture and Human Values

Navigating the adoption spectrum: how U.S. farmers manage longevity, entirety, variability and complementarity of cover crops

Meredith Niles, Professor of Environment and Society and Behavioral and Social Sciences, is among the authors of this study.

April 13, 2026 Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology

Extreme heat and hospitalization with Parkinson’s disease among older adults

This study, coauthored by IBES and Public Health Professor Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, found that high heat index exposure is associated with increased odds of hospitalization with Parkinson's amongst older adults, particularly those living in temperate climates in the US South.

April 5, 2026 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine

Could non-humans have Traditional Ecological Knowledge? And if so, what should we do about it?

Voss Postdoc Elodie Freymann is first author of this paper, which argues that "acknowledging the existence of Non-Human Traditional Ecological Knowledge can shift anthropocentric perspectives and inform conservation policies aimed at protecting ecological cultures and relevant resources."

February 27, 2026 Communications Sustainability

Large language model reveals an increase in climate contrarian speech in the United States Congress

IBES and Sociology Professor J. Timmons Roberts William Kattrup '25 contributed to this study.

February 20, 2026 Geophysical Research Letters

Representation of Surface Mixed-Layer Eddies Affects the Large-Scale Ventilation of the Global Ocean

DEEPS Professor and IBES Fellow Baylor Fox-Kemper co-authored this study, which reveals how small-scale ocean processes have substantial effects on global model results.

February 20, 2026 JAMA Network

Tropical Cyclone Exposure and Psychoactive Drug–Related Death Rates

IBES and Epidemiology Professor Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou is among the co-authors of a recent study that links tropical cyclones to spikes in drug-related deaths for months after impact.

February 2, 2026 PNAS

Evolution of Pliocene-Pleistocene tropical terrestrial Andean temperature amplification

Former Voss Postdoc Lina C. Pérez-Angel authored this article, which found that the tropics are warming more than expected.

January 31, 2026 EdWorkingPapers

U.S. Schools’ Proximity to Environmental Hazard Sites: A National Analysis

Professor of Education and IBES faculty affiliate Matthew Kraft and members of his SustainableED team conducted a nationwide assessment of U.S. PreK-12 public and private schools’ proximity to known environmental hazard sites.

January 29, 2026 AGU Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology

Plant Wax Isotopic Reconstructions Reveal Thermodynamic Drivers of Hydroclimate Over the Last Two Glacial Cycles at Great Salt Lake and Bear Lake, Utah

Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra is coauthor of this study.

January 28, 2026 Social Problems

“Let them eat kale!”: Appeals to class-based resentment in American conservative opposition to climate change solutions

IBES Assistant Professor Rachel Wetts and coauthor Loredana Loy reveal that "appeals to class-based resentment against cultural elites are one prominent strategy to urge publics to reject climate mitigation strategies."

January 8, 2026 Communications Sustainability

Higher temperatures are associated with increased interpersonal and self-inflicted violence-related Medicaid hospital visits in the United States

IBES and Epidemiology Professor Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou is among the authors of this new study, which links violence and temperature spikes.

January 6, 2026 Climate and Development Lab

Who’s Obstructing Climate Action in the Rhode Island Legislature?

Members of the IBES-based Climate and Development Lab found that Rhode Island Energy and the Public Utilities Commission are among the entities obstructing climate action in the state.

November 9, 2025 Frontiers in Bird Science

Fire-crested alethes (Alethe castanea) follow humans and bushbuck in Uganda’s Budongo Forest

This report, authored by IBES Voss Postdoc Elodie Freymann, documents a novel foraging behavior in fire-crested alethes in the Budongo Forest Reserve of Western Uganda.

November 6, 2025 Geneva Centre for Security Policy

Algorithmic North: Weather, Security and International Law

Professor Amanda Lynch co-authored this policy brief.

November 5, 2025 Nature Geoscience

Isotopic evidence for elevated photorespiration during the last glacial period

This paper, co-authored by Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra, supports the hypothesis of a negative feedback that limits atmospheric carbon dioxide decline during glacial periods.

September 23, 2025 Trends in Ecology & Evolution

‘Earth system engineers’ and the cumulative impact of organisms in deep time

Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra is co-author of this study, which provides a new framework for examining how organisms have fundamentally altered ecosystems on a global scale across hundreds, thousands, or millions of years.

September 19, 2025 Journal of Heredity

Levels and partitioning of genetic variation of northeastern populations of diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin)

This study, co-authored by IBES and Biology Associate Professor Tyler Kartzinel, reveals that diamondback terrapins face heightened risks at the northern edge of their range in New England as their genetic diversity declines.

September 19, 2025 npj Climate Action

Unpacking the tradeoff between equity and climate resilience in U.S. housing policy

Jennifer Hadden, an IBES affiliate at the Watson School for International and Public Affairs, co-penned this commentary, which notes that "the current U.S. housing policy regime creates tradeoffs between promoting equity and addressing climate risk."

September 12, 2025 Nature Communications

Greenland ice sheet runoff reduced by meltwater refreezing in bare ice

This study, co-authored by Professor Laurence C. Smith and former IBES postdoc Jonathan Ryan, suggests that climate models may be overestimating current levels of meltwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet.

August 8, 2025 Carbon Balance and Management

Life cycle emissions associated with vault storage of wood cleared for fire management in the Western United States

This paper, coauthored by IBES Professor Stephen Porder and Declan Johnson '24, suggests that wood vaults are a promising emissions-reduction strategy, but challenges remain.

August 1, 2025 Sage Journals

Climate Politics as Status Politics: Struggles over the Symbolic Worth of Educational Credentials in the US Climate Change Debate

Assistant Professor of Environment and Society Rachel Wetts examines how the social value of education contributes to partisanship within climate debates.

July 30, 2025 Nature Climate Change

Reconsidering space-for-time substitution in climate change ecology

IBES Professor Dov Sax coauthored this article, which highlights why ecology's space-for-time substitution method can be misleading, and makes suggestions for improving the reliability of ecological forecasts.

July 15, 2025 EdWorkingPapers

Education and Climate Change: Synthesizing the Evidence to Guide Future Research

The first working paper from the Sustainable Education Research Initiative, led by IBES affiliate Matthew Kraft (Department of Education) and supported by an IBES Catalyst Research Award.

May 29, 2025 Frontiers in Climate

When boundaries are blurred: infrastructure needs in support of the climate displaced

Article coauthor Jennifer Hadden, an IBES affiliate at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, proposes a framework for understanding the basic infrastructure needs of people displaced by climate change during four phases: initiation, mobilization, pause and settle.

May 8, 2025 Nature Cities

Land subsidence risk to infrastructure in US metropolises

IBES Postdoc Sonam Futi Sherpa contributed to this study, which finds that all of the 28 most populous U.S. cities are sinking.

April 3, 2025 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.

March 21, 2025 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.

March 15, 2025 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.

March 11, 2025 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.

February 5, 2025 Global Ecology and Conservation

Diet-microbiome covariation across three giraffe species in a close-contact zone

Associate Professor Tyler Kartzinel's lab group collaborated with nonprofits in Kenya and Namibia to compare the diets and gut microbiomes of giraffes.

January 27, 2025 Environmental Research

XIS-PM2.5: A daily spatiotemporal machine-learning model for PM2.5 in the contiguous United States

IBES and Epidemiology Associate Professor Allan Just led the development of this state-of-the-art national spatiotemporal exposure model, which reconstructs daily particulate air pollution estimates for use in a wide range of health studies.

January 12, 2025 Environmental Research

XIS-temperature: A daily spatiotemporal machine-learning model for air temperature in the contiguous United States

IBES and Epidemiology Associate Professor Allan Just led the development of this state-of-the-art national spatiotemporal exposure model, reconstructing daily temperature estimates for use in a wide range of health studies.

January 7, 2025 American Ethnologist

Improperty: Black land stewardship and the paradox of liberation on stolen land

IBES and Anthropology Assistant Professor Myles Lennon discusses "improperty": "modes of ownership that paradoxically unsettle the logics of accumulation and enclosure that are proper to the property form."

December 19, 2024 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Stable isotope tempestology of tropical cyclones across the North Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Ocean basins

IBES Director Kim Cobb is among the researchers who contributed to this study, which investigates past hurricanes in order to reduce future risk.

December 18, 2024 Sports Medicine

Running on Fumes: An Analysis of Fine Particulate Matter's Impact on Finish Times in Nine Major US Marathons, 2003-2019

IBES Associate Professor Allan Just and Faculty Fellow Joseph Braun, both epidemiologists in the School of Public Health, contributed to this study.

December 6, 2024 Nature Geoscience

The palaeoclimate potential of continental scientific drilling

Correspondence by IBES Fellow James Russell and colleagues on how a strategic expansion of continental drilling efforts would help advance paleoclimate research.

December 5, 2024 Distillations Magazine

Proxies for Justice

"The climate history of tropical regions has been chronically understudied," former Voss Postdoc Researchers Jayson Maurice Porter and Lina C.
Lina C. Pérez-Angel write in this article. "Correcting the record will require new methods and new mindsets.

December 2, 2024 Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

From reduction to regeneration: Environmental justice and ecological unity in the IRA era

In this peer-reviewed article, IBES and Anthropology Assistant Professor Myles Lennon "calls on the [environmental justice] movement to shift from the reductive framework at the heart of the IRA to a regenerative framework aligned with the movement's 'ecological unity' principle."