Brown research team finds small unmapped lakes in the Arctic are far less abundant than previously thought, greatly reducing the cumulative methane emissions they were thought to contribute to Earth’s atmosphere.
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Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences
Laurence C. Smith
John Atwater and Diana Nelson University Professor of Environmental Studies in the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society (IBES) and the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS)
85 Waterman
Research Interests
Environmental Science, Oceans Ice and Atmospheres
Biography
Laurence C. Smith is the John Atwater and Diana Nelson University Professor of Environmental Studies in the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society (IBES) and the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS) at Brown University. Previously, he was Professor and Chair of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also held a joint appointment in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences. His research interests include the Arctic, water resources, and satellite remote sensing technologies. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, essays, and books including in the journals Science, Nature, and PNAS, and won more than $16M in research funding from the National Science Foundation and NASA. He is a Guggenheim Fellow of the John S. Guggenheim Foundation and an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). His work has appeared prominently in Assessment Reports of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is currently assisting NASA with a new satellite mission to monitor global water resources, and the World Economic Forum with social science issues of Arctic development. On three occasions he was an invited speaker for the World Economic Forum in Davos.
His general-audience book THE WORLD IN 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future (Plume: New York, 2011; U.K. edition titled THE NEW NORTH, Profile: London, 2011 with translations in 14 languages) synthesizing cross-cutting trends in natural resource demand, demographics, globalization, and climate change with emphasis on northern countries was the winner of the Walter P. Kistler Book Award and a NATURE Editor's Pick of 2012. His second book RIVERS OF POWER, about rivers and society (Hachette Group USA/Canada; Penguin Press U.K; plus overseas translation editions), was a GEOGRAPHICAL Best Book of 2020. His research has received coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, The Financial Times, Discover Magazine, NPR, CBC Radio, BBC, and others.
Recent News
In his interview with Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong, Professor Laurence Smith argues that implementing new approaches to managing rivers is essential for healthier waterways and sustaining the communities that depend on them. Moreover, strategic management today is the way to a better, climate-adapted future.
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The New York Times
Long Stretches of the Mississippi River Have Run Dry. What’s Next?
Professor Laurence Smith reflects on the impact of drought and climate change on “economic powerhouse rivers” and offers ideas to reimagine their use, such as diverting rivers to deposit sediment on fragile coastline or removing structures to restore rivers to a free-flowing state. “Radical new thinking is the only way to make sure our rivers endure,” he said. “There are no new rivers left to tap.”
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