2008 An Environmental Crossroads

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Global warming clouds our future. Pollution degrades our air, soil and water. Environmental toxins compromise the health of our children. Misuse threatens the sustainability of our forests, fisheries, wetlands and coasts, and the health of species that live there.

But there is reason for hope.

Through sound science and policy research, we're finding answers to these problems. Airborne lead and acid rain have been dramatically reduced. Industrial water pollution has decreased. Habitats are being preserved.

Faculty members from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University are part of the effort to help find these answers and establish new environmental practices and policies to safeguard our natural resources for generations to come.

To contact our experts or learn more about what we're doing in states across the nation, click on the state you're interested in.

Public Lands & Water
Resource-rich Wyoming is on the front line of the national debate about the use of public lands and waters. In recent years, industry, landowners, local citizens, environmentalists and government leaders have grappled with issues like water rights, mineral rights, land use and water use at sites across the Equality State, especially on its 7.1 million acres of national forests.

Norm Christensen has studied and written extensively about the impact of logging and grazing on forest ecosystems and wildfire management in the West.
tel: (919) 613-8052 e: normc@duke.edu

Research focus: Community ecology. Disturbance and succession. Sustainable forest ecosystem management. Forest fires.

Although the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 designated many Nevada forests for hazardous fuel reduction – i.e. logging – Christensen’s studies indicate such actions are unnecessary in many forests and may do more harm than good, especially in some dryer-phase mixed conifer forests in parts of the Sierra Nevada and in lodgepole pine forests.

“Decades of fire suppression, grazing and logging have changed the condition of many public forest lands, causing large wildfires to occur more frequently, burn hotter and spread farther and faster,” he says. “These practices have left many Western forests in prime condition for catastrophic wildfires.’

Rob Jackson can discuss the challenge of balancing human and ecological needs for freshwater, a problem exacerbated in drought periods.
tel: (919) 660-7408: e: jackson@duke.edu

Research focus: Ecosystem functioning and feedbacks between global change and the biosphere. Global carbon cycle. Water cycle. Climate modeling.

Lynn Maguire is an expert on collaborative decision-making on environmental issues made complex by uncertainty, multiple objectives and disputing parties.
tel: (919) 613-8034: e: lmaguire@duke.edu

Research focus: Collaborative decision processes. Facilitation of environmental disputes. Decision analysis for environmental problems that are difficult because of uncertainty, multiple or conflicting objectives, and disputing parties.

Recent applications include the northern spotted owl and other endangered species; invasive species; water quality; wildfire risk; and seafood rating systems.

Maguire’s research evaluates both the substance of environmental decisions - how well the resulting management actions reflect public values and available science - and the process of environmental decision making - how well the mechanisms used to involve the public achieve social justice goals.

Jonathan Wiener is an expert on the design of environmental policy and risk regulation. He is faculty director of the Duke Center for Environmental Solutions.
tel: (919) 613-7054 or 613-8131 e: wiener@law.duke.edu

Research focus: Wiener studies the intersection of science, economics and law in regulatory systems, both national and global, including the design of incentive-based systems such as allowance trading and the design of risk-superior regulatory solutions that overcome risk-risk tradeoffs. His recent research projects include the book Reconstructing Climate Policy, and the series, “Transatlantic Dialogues on Precaution.”

He has worked on US and international environmental policy at the White House Council of Economic Advisers and Office of Science and Technology Policy, and at the US Department of Justice, in both the first Bush and Clinton administrations. His policy work and writing have addressed topics including climate change, forest conservation, risk and risk-risk tradeoffs, biotechnology, mass torts, and incentives in regulation and litigation.