2020-21 News Stories

Congratulations to two GCC affiliated faculty members who have earned tenure and promotion in June 2021 as a result of their outstanding achievements in teaching, research, and service.

Please join us in welcoming the newest Global Change Center faculty affiliates!

Bird-friendly coffee is certified organic, but its impact on the environment goes further than that: it is cultivated specifically to maintain bird habitats instead of clearing vegetation that birds and other animals rely on.

The GCC welcomes four new faculty affiliates in January 2021!

Faculty and students at VT are invited to join a new professional networking and research seminar series centered on human-water systems. Meetings will be held the third Friday of each month from 1-2 pm EST, with the first meeting occurring on Friday, January 15th, 2021.

With the help of newly discovered skulls and skeletons that were unearthed in North America, Brazil, Argentina, and Madagascar in recent years, Virginia Tech researchers Sterling Nesbitt and Michelle Stocker from the Department of Geosciences in the College of Science have demonstrated that a group of “dinosaur precursors,” called lagerpetids, are the closest relatives of pterosaurs.

William Hopkins, Global Change Center director and professor of wildlife in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, has been selected to receive a 2021 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) and Dominion Energy.

Because of land use and climate change, lakes and reservoirs globally are seeing large decreases in oxygen concentrations in their bottom waters. It is well-documented that low oxygen levels have detrimental effects on fish and water quality, but little is known about how these conditions will affect the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in freshwaters.

Hokies graduating this fall will celebrate with the ideal person to provide guidance on safe post-ceremony hugs. Linsey Marr, the Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Global Change Center affiliate, has been selected as the speaker for Virginia Tech’s fall commencement exercises.

Looking to predict beetle abundance and springtime greenness, among other things, the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge is looking to mobilize researchers and forecast answers to a complex set of ecological questions.

At the edge of a retreating glacier, bedrock terrain that has been hidden under layers of ice is seeing light for the first time in several hundred years. On mountain peaks, trees experiencing warmer weather are gradually moving higher than established tree lines. Along Virginia’s coast, sea levels are rising by as much as 1 inch every four years.

Viruses are tiny invaders that cause a wide range of diseases, from rabies to tomato spotted wilt virus and, most recently, COVID-19 in humans. But viruses can do more than elicit sickness — and not all viruses are tiny.

Dr. Cayelan Carey is teaching a graduate-level course on “Science of Team Science” during the spring 2021 semester. Drs. Rachel Reid and Ben Gill are offering a joint graduate/undergraduate course Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry in spring 2021.

Scientists don’t yet know what caused the Triassic mass-extinction event — one of the largest extinction events in the history of our planet — 200 million years ago.

Scientists have long known that clear water lakes are in danger from land development, pollutants, run-off from storms, and climate change because of increased nutrient pollutants that lead to algae blooms.

Welcome to our newest GCC Affiliates!

Department of Population Health Sciences faculty member and Global Change Center affiliate Ryan Calder released today a policy report evaluating economic and environmental costs and benefits of diverse scenarios for renewable energy transitions for the New York City Area.

For centuries, scientists have worked above ground, studying plants and their effect on biodiversity. Lying below the scientists’ feet, though, is a world with even richer biodiversity — the soil.

Throughout much of her career, Linsey Marr found that her multi-disciplinary approach to science was more of a challenge than an asset.