Related articles:

UA climate institute 'ups the game,' new scientist says

Other articles by Tom Beal:

Astronomer to explain why he let Pluto down Enthusiasm for Obama high for Tucson's blacks UA genomics lab tackles Holocaust puzzle Architect chosen for Historical Society's Rio Nuevo museum '06 cascade of boulders was rare, but a red flag, too Asteroid searcher hopes his discoveries won't produce direct impact Towering turbines coming to AZ Danny's gone, but he helped his O'odham culture live on Student group off and running with UA plan for sustainabilityUniversity of Arizona students have major plans to make campus 'green'

General
CORT
Warehouse Supervisor Construction
Komatsu Equipment Co
Mechanic Health Care
Rio Salado College
PA's/Online Instructors Education
Assessment Technology, Inc
Social Studies Content Writer General
CORT
WAREHOUSE/DRIVER

The University of Arizona has lured a researcher from her environmental post at Oxford University to help head up the newly created Institute for Environment and Society, which will replace the UA's Institute for the Study of Planet Earth.

The hiring of Diana Liverman and the formation of the new institute are part of a university initiative to reinforce its standing at the forefront of environmental and climate-change studies and to link that science with the formulation of public policy, said Andrew Comrie, associate vice president for research at the UA.

It also helps fulfill commitments the university made to climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck earlier this year when he was contemplating a job at the University of Wisconsin.

Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, was a co-author of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose scientists shared a Nobel Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

Overpeck will be co-director of the new institute, which will eventually be housed in a $90 million building, designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum standards, according to a UA press release.

The name change is partly cosmetic. Comrie said it will more clearly communicate the mission to the outside world and will emphasize a renewed interest in applying environmental research to public policy.

"We have lots of environmental scientists here on campus, not just water, but the hard sciences right on through to policy and law. It's one of the strengths of the UA," Comrie said. "This is a cool place to do environmental research, and we're good at it."

The announcement comes as the university is looking at ways to cut costs without reducing its commitment to areas in which it excels. In that context, said Comrie, the new institute sends a message about "being able to invest in the things we do well."

The institute will "support and integrate work by nearly 150 faculty from more than nine colleges," the UA said in announcing the hiring of Liverman.

Liverman has been director of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute for the past five years. Before that, she was a professor of geography at the UA and also served as director of the Center for Latin American Studies and interim dean of social and behavioral sciences.

Tom Swetnam, climate-change researcher and director of the UA's Tree-Ring Laboratory, said Liverman's addition to the faculty is a welcome one.

"She is a very good scientist, always first-rate," he said.

"It will be interesting to see how the new institute can evolve and adapt to the new structures we're going to be building."

Swetnam said the talk has ranged from combining departments to "quite possibly a new school of Earth and the environmental sciences that is directly focused on climate change."

If nothing else, said Swetnam, the institute and the new building, slated to break ground next year and be completed in 2012, will bring coherence to the program.

"We've been kind of scattered around campus. We might be able to assemble these units into a stronger new coherent group in a new school or a new college. That's a possibility."

Liverman said she seeks to create an umbrella, not an empire, joining her role as social scientist to Overpeck's as a natural scientist.

She spoke Friday of engaging economists and business college experts on consumer preference in tying the science of climate change to policies to adapt to and mitigate it.

In May, Overpeck turned down a post as director of an environmental program at the University of Wisconsin.

He did not make himself available for an interview Monday, but he told the Arizona Daily Star in May that he agreed to stay on at UA after administrators promised to accelerate the new building and the hiring of more environmental researchers.

On StarNet: Find environment and wildlife resources at azstarnet.com/environment.