Understanding how human activities impact the environment and ecosystems involves a web of interconnecting biological, chemical, and physical components. In addition to the disciplinary expertise required for each of these elements, mathematics plays a strong role in effectively analyzing and computing how the key drivers and parameters influence the various metrics of health of the ecosystem and environment. In particular, mathematical techniques and considerations are applied to derive quantitative representations of the complex models, to develop effective computational schemes which can accurately handle the multiple scales and equation types in the models, and to integrate historical and observational data into models which can help predict the effects of changes in policy and/or climate.

Particular aspects of geophysical and environmental modeling with which our faculty have been engaged include the analysis and simulation of turbulent wave interactions in the ocean, effective representations of chemical transport by flow structures in the ocean, the study of interacting vortex dynamics in planetary atmospheres, and spatio-temporal models for plant-herbivore interactions. The recently launched Jefferson Project at Lake George promises to deliver an unprecedented amount of data and information regarding the physical, chemical, and ecological state of the lake, and new collaboration opportunities for our faculty.

Faculty Researchers:

• Peter Kramer 
• Chjan Lim