Overview

Scientists and policymakers have realised that localities are central to addressing the causes and consequences of global environmental change. The goal of the Human-Environment Regional Observatory project (HERO) was to develop the infrastructure necessary to monitor and understand the local dimensions of global change. This book presents the philosophy behind HERO, the methods used to put that philosophy into action, its results, and the lessons learned from the project. HERO used three strategies: it developed research protocols and data standards for collecting data; it built a web-based networking environment to help investigators share data, analyses and ideas from remote locations; and investigators field-tested these concepts by applying them in diverse biophysical and socioeconomic settings - central Massachusetts, central Pennsylvania, southwestern Kansas, and the US-Mexico border region of Arizona. The book highlights the unique focus of HERO regarding thinking and acting on complex, integrative, and interdisciplinary global change science at local scales, and is valuable for global change scientists.

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9781108445740

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Brent Yarnal is Professor of Geography at Pennsylvania State University. His research and teaching interests bridge the physical and social sciences, and integrate climate change, natural hazards, land-use change, water resources, and the use of environmental information in decision making. His research focuses on vulnerability to and adaptation planning for present and future climate change, local and regional greenhouse gas emissions inventories and mitigation planning, and the role of climate information in water resource decision making. He has authored and contributed to numerous books and journal articles, and was the editor of Climate Research - Interactions of Climate with Organisms, Ecosystems and Human Societies from 1996–2001. Colin Polsky is Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, Massachusetts. He is a geographer specialising in the human dimensions of global environmental change. He has explored ways to blend quantitative and qualitative methods for the study of social and ecological vulnerability to environmental changes in the Arctic, the US Great Plains, and central and eastern Massachusetts. This research requires the blending of statistical techniques (such as empirical downscaling and spatial econometrics) with insight gained from qualitative methods (such as interviews and participant observation). Professor Polsky has an extensive range of publications on the subject. James O'Brien is Principal Lecturer in the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment at Kingston University, London. His research and teaching interests include Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enterprise and research, GIS software development, internet GIS, GIS and natural hazards, spatial databases, and geographic semantics. He has co-presented papers at international conferences on geographic semantics and the role of GIS in education.

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