Ruth DeFries examines human transformation of the landscape and its consequences for climate, biogeochemical cycling, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services that make our planet habitable. The ...

The Earth Institute was established in 1995 to advance our understanding of Earth science and apply that knowledge to decisions made by governments and businesses around the world. A world leader in ...

Pedro Sanchez attributes the roots of his life’s work in soil sciences to the fact that he always liked to “play with dirt.” That boyhood pastime was nurtured by the fact that his family owned a ...

The Millennium Villages project offers a bold, innovative model for helping rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty. The Millennium Villages themselves are proving that by ...

Mark Cane has never been one to follow the status quo. After studying pure mathematics and what is now known as computer science at Harvard in the 60s, he took a hiatus from academia to work in New ...

For twenty years, Robin Elizabeth Bell has worked alongside a team of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory geophysics senior scientists and engineers to coordinate nine major aero-geophysical expeditions ...

The Earth Institute at Columbia University aims to create a rich educational environment for study in the earth and environmental sciences. One way that it accomplishes this objective is by providing ...

Elke Weber has made it her life’s work to understand why and how people make the decisions they make. Not a simple task. Take, for example, smoking cigarettes. Doctors’ warnings of the deadly ...

Debra Tillinger is a fifth year doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. program in earth and environmental science, which aims to train broadly educated earth scientists for careers in academia, research, ...

To view the original story with images on the IRI website, please click here. Millions of people in the tropics depend on coconuts for food, raw materials and livelihood. Coconuts are also a high ...

More than one billion people--one-sixth of the world's population--live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day. At the Earth Institute, researchers take a “human needs" approach to developing ...