Ocean Sciences and the global change programs of the National Science Foundation (NSF). He also led the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1987 to 2000. He was formerly a professor and academic administrator at the University of New Hampshire. He is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training. He received his Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Ruth S. DeFries (NAS) is Denning Professor of Sustainable Development in Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology. Her research investigates the relationships between human activities, the land surface, and the biophysical and biogeochemical processes that regulate the Earth’s habitability. She is interested in observing land cover and land use change at regional and global scales with remotely sensed data and exploring the implications for ecological services such as climate regulation, the carbon cycle, and biodiversity. Dr. DeFries obtained a Ph.D. in 1980 from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in 1976 from Washington University with a major in earth science. Previously, Dr. DeFries worked at the National Research Council with the Committee on Global Change and taught at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. She is a fellow of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program.

Inez Y. Fung (NAS) is a professor of atmospheric sciences and founding co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the interactions between climate change and biogeochemical cycles, particularly the processes that maintain and alter the composition of the atmosphere. Her research emphasis is on using atmospheric transport models and a coupled carbon-climate model to examine how carbon dioxide sources and sinks are changing. She is also a member of the science team for NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory. Dr. Fung is a recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s Roger Revelle Medal, and appears in a new NAS biography series for middle-school readers, Women’s Adventure in Science. She is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She received her B.S. in applied mathematics and her Ph.D. in meteorology from MIT.

Steven Gaines is Director of the Marine Science Institute and Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is a marine ecologist who studies marine conservation, the design of marine reserves, the impact of climate change on oceans, and sustainable fisheries. Dr. Gaines is a lead investigator of several groups: (1) the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), a consortium studying marine ecosystems of the west coast of the United States, (2) the Santa Barbara Coastal Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) that studies connections between coastal watersheds and the ecology of kelp forests,