Research focus

Issues of social and ecological sustainability with a primary focus on the drivers of overconsumption and the conditions for restrained resource use.  

Barry Rabe holds a joint appointment with the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.  He is also a faculty associate and former director of the Program in the Environment. During the 2008-09 academic year, he will be a visiting professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.  Rabe has published widely on issues of state, local and intergovernmental involvement across a range of environmental issues.  Much of his recent work has examined "bottom-up" approaches to climate change, with particular emphasis on the expanding state government role in this area.  In 2007, he received the Daniel Elazar Award for Career Contribution to the Study of Federalism from the American Political Science Association.  In 2006, he received a Climate Protection Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency.   His most recent book is STATEHOUSE AND GREENHOUSE: THE EMERGING POLITICS OF AMERICAN CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY (Brookings, 2004).

Research interests include the effects of natural and anthropogenic stresses on Great Lakes and marine ecosystems, with a focus on the use of models and integrated assessments in transferring knowledge to the decision-making process. Teaching interests include the roles of conveying uncertainty, peer review, stakeholder input, interpreting trends, prediction, scale, and government interaction in developing and applying Integrated Scientific Assessments.

Research interests include social movements; environmental justice; leisure and natural resource use; poverty and urban issues; and race, gender and ethnic relations. Recent researh activities have included a study of racial differences in students' attitudes and perception of the environment, as well as an examination of minority environmental activism in the U.S.

Paul Webb holds a joint appointment with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and he serves as Associate Director of the Program in the Environment. Teaching includes Ecological Issues, fish biology and ecology, animal physiology, and a number of undergraduate independent studies each year. Research includes physiological ecology and functional morphology of aquatic vertebrates, primarily fishes. Research seeks to identify and understand fundamental principles of energetics and form and function, which in turn affect distributions of fishes and their populations and assemblages. These interests are currently focussing on how physical factors shape shorelines and hence shoreline fish communities, affecting management and restoration. Another area of research concerns factors that affect fish assemblages in coastal marshes. Much of these researches are done in collaboration with faculty in the engineering school.

Teaching involves general aquatic and stream/river ecology. Research interests include ecology of rivers and lakes, watershed management, community dynamics and population regulation, trout stream food webs, behavioral adaptations of aquatic insects, fish invertebrate interactions, and fisheries management.

John Witter is the George Willis Pack Professor of Forest Entomology. He focuses on the effects of invasive insects and diseases on individual trees, ecosystems, and landscapes in the Great Lakes Region. He examines interactions of various disturbances, such as insects, drought, frost, pollution, and human actions, and their impacts on health and changes in forests.

My courses are largely case-based and discussion-oriented. They examine different dimensions of environmental decision-making in organizations, agencies and society in the face of conflict. Specific course topics include: Environmental Dispute Resolution; Collaborative Ecosystem Management; Negotiation and Mediation; and Environmental Organizations.

Steven Yaffee is the Theodore Roosevelt Professor of Ecosystem Management. Research involves natural resource and environmental policy, planning and management; processes of policy formation and implementation; and organizational arrangements for managing natural resources. Of particular interest is policy involving endangered species, public lands, ecosystem management, and nonprofit environmental organizations. Also interested in innovative ways to make collective choices including alternative dispute resolution, collaborative problem-solving, and negotiation processes.

Don Zak holds a joint appointment in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, College of Literature, Science, and Arts. His research investigates links between the composition and function of soil microbial communities, and the influence of microbial activity on ecosystem-level processes. This work draws on ecology, microbiology, and biochemistry and is focused at several scales of understanding. Current research centers on understanding the link between plant and microbial activity within terrestrial ecosystems, and the influence climate change may have on these dynamics. Teaching includes courses in soil ecology and ecosystem ecology.

Research interests focus on testing and enhancing human behavior, decision, and persuasion theories in environmental education and communication (especially risk) contexts applying structural equation modeling, meta-analysis and case studies. Most current studies focus on evaluating environmental education resources and programs.