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1
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- Center for Global Change and Earth Observations (CGCEO)
- Skole (Director); Gage (Associate Director)
- Computational Ecology and Visualization Laboratory (CEVL)
- Gage (Director); Skole (Faculty Associate)
- Remote Environmental Assessment Laboratory (REAL)
- Qi and Gage (Co-Directors)
- Development of a Digital Campus (Poston)
- Hannah Chair in Land Use (Land Use Policy Program)
- Skole and Gage on search and selection committee
- Victor Institute
- Gage on search and selection committee
- Environmental Science and Policy Program
- Skole and Gage on Advisory Committee (Huggett)
- Gage on planning Committee (Gray)
- Gage on implementation Committee (Dietz)
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2
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- Consortium Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases (Gage
established MSU initiative; Skole member of team)
- The Consortium for Agricultural Soil Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases
(CASMGS) will provide the information and technology necessary to
develop, analyze and implement carbon sequestration strategies.
Consortium members at Michigan State University represent a well
integrated group of internationally recognized researchers and
extension leaders in a wide range of disciplines that include
agricultural ecology, spatial analysis, agronomy, soil science,
biogeochemistry, sociology and extension. Relevant expertise includes
the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions and calculation of relative
global climate forcing by soil emissions for agricultural, successional
and forested systems. The spatial analysis and modeling group has
excellent databases and expertise in investigating the role of weather,
pests, and agricultural practices on crop production, soils and other
ecological properties at the regional scale. The influence of
human-societal controls on decision-making at farm, local, state and
national scales are integrated into both the research and outreach
activities of Consortium scientists.
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3
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- Regional Earth Science Application Center (Skole led MSU effort; Gage
member of MSU Team)
- The Regional Earth Science Applications Center (RESAC) was established
by NASA as a consortium of universities, state and federal natural
resource management agencies, and industry partners who are developing
satellite remote sensing products, geospatial analysis methods, and
biophysical process models to meet regional decision making needs. The
Upper Midwest RESAC (or the Center) is a project of three Land Grant
Universities in the Upper Midwest region: University of Minnesota, University
of Wisconsin-Madison, and Michigan State University. This three-state
partnership is forging what the National Academy of Sciences called, a
"new geography" of the land grant university system,
combining academic and technological strengths to better serve the
region's citizens through multi-state partnerships and consortia.
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4
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- Michigan Land Resource Project (Gage, Skole and Pijanowski led this
project)
- The intent of the study is to examine where Michigan is headed as a
state and to develop a clearer understanding of how current land use
decisions will affect the future of these industries in Michigan. The
first phase of this project, completed by Michigan State University, is
a land use projection for the entire state of Michigan, using geographic
information systems (GIS). Projections are made to the years 2020 and
2040, using sophisticated computer technology and assuming that present
land use development patterns continue. These years were chosen because
they are not too distant in the future to understand and not too close
in time that it would be impossible to effect policy change if that is
deemed desirable. They are also far enough out that the effects of
economic swings will not skew the results.
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5
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- Coordination and Integration of MSU Land Use Research and
Extension/Outreach Efforts (Gage is Co-PI and Skole is senior Advisor)
- This grant improves coordination and integration of MSU land use
research and extension/outreach efforts. The focus is on building
university capacity to provide public education on land use issues, as
well as undergirding this educational programming with excellent applied
research. This development grant will create the partnership and provide
the foundation that will ultimately focus the MSUPSC resources toward
informing public and private land use decisions and improving knowledge
regarding the use of Michigan’s
land resources.
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6
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- The Tipping Point Analysis and Projection for Michigan Counties (Gage (PI), Pijanowski (contractor),
Skole (Senior Advisor)
- As Michigan’s land base continues its transition from a natural resource
based economy to a built economy the state will face many predictable as
well as many unanticipated consequences. Some of these will directly
impact the land based industries sectors (Agriculture, Tourism and
Forestry) and others will impact the ecosystem structure and function
upon which these industries are founded. A remarkable finding of a
recent study, coordinated and facilitated by Public Sector Consultants
(2001) on behalf of the Kellogg Foundation and the Frey Foundation,
projected that by 2040 the built land use would increase by 178 % at the
expense of other major land use classes in Michigan (4 million acres of
land transitioned from agriculture, forestry, tourism, wetlands) with
the greatest amount shifting from agriculture and private forestland.
Direct losses of revenue to these economic sectors will be substantial
as regions make the transition over time. The indirect losses will have
more subtle consequences but may impair Michigan’s ecological
infrastructure to a significant extent such that Michigan will lose its
position of prominence as a state with an economy based on its natural
resources. This web page provides county level maps and trends of
Michigan’s changing landscape to evaluate the inflection point where the
transformation from one land use state to another results in a
transition of an industry or ecosystem from one system state to another.
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Notes