Earth Matters - Earth Matters

Dear Alumni, Colleagues, and Friends,

On April 25, when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal, geological sciences graduate student Anne Sanquini was in Kathmandu investigating ways to motivate people to retrofit their homes and buildings to be more earthquake resistant.

She said that, a few seconds into the shaking, she realized this was the earthquake she “had feared since starting to work on this research three years ago.” Anne is one of scores of graduate researchers and faculty within the school who are working to create new knowledge and translate it into actions that will help ensure a safe and sustainable world, for today’s and future generations.

Sanquini and her advisor, Professor George Hilley, have combined geology expertise with knowledge from behavioral psychology along with Sanquini’s background in corporate marketing to develop and test a media approach in the Kathmandu Valley that could motivate people to retrofit their local schools. This kind of interdisciplinary research, resting on and made possible by our disciplinary strengths, sets our school—and Stanford—apart.

Looking ahead, my faculty colleagues and I see the need to increase our focus on four interdisciplinary challenges that are critical for humanity:

Secure the energy future: Develop new approaches and technologies to help provide abundant, efficient, and sustainable energy sources in the coming decades. In February, for example, we launched the Natural Gas Initiative to engage faculty at the school and across the university in research that will help ensure that natural gas is developed and used in ways that are economically, environmentally, and socially optimal.
Develop climate solutions: Create improved understanding of climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, and responses. For example, faculty member David Lobell is studying the effects of climate change on the global productivity of staple crops such as wheat and corn, in order to pinpoint some of the most vulnerable areas.
Reduce disaster risks: Use advances in computation and remote sensing to provide insights into natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and landslides; and develop approaches to increase resilience to them, as Anne was doing in Nepal.
Improve food and water security: Evaluate food and water resources that are needed for a still-growing world population and develop strategies to meet those needs in the face of a rapid change. Among many other teaching and research activities, our new O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm aims to help students gain firsthand experience with sustainable agricultural practices. Our new “farm on the farm” will open in October.

It is true that Stanford faculty already lead international efforts to address these problems. But to accelerate our impact, we need to integrate disciplines for effective problem solving. Moving ahead quickly in the four critical challenge areas requires that we stay strong in the disciplines we are already known for, integrate them more effectively, and add new faculty in areas such as land use planning, energy optimization, risk analysis, the science of ice, watershed analysis, ecosystem services and benefits analysis, and economics.

I look forward to keeping you informed as we accelerate our teaching and learning, discovery and problem solving to improve our understanding of the workings of our planet and secure the well-being of this and future generations.

I also hope you enjoy this issue of Earth Matters, which highlights some of the work being done around the key areas I mentioned. As always, you are invited to contact us with your ideas and to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Best,