Dr. Christopher Field, Co-Chair of the Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has been awarded the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the climate change category.
Dr. Field received the award for discovering the importance of ecosystems and their effective management in the battle against climate change. According to the BBVA Foundation, his research has “…allowed to quantify the global climate impact of deforestation, agriculture and other changes in vegetation cover. And vice versa. It has helped predict how climate change will impact on land ecosystems.”
The jury said the award recognizes Dr. Field’s fundamental contributions to understanding the interactions between the dynamics of plants and land ecosystems and CO2 released through human activities.
“His visionary research on the global carbon cycle demonstrated that projections of future climate require the explicit consideration of land ecosystems and their management,” the jury added in a citation.
Dr. Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. The author of more than 200 scientific publications, Dr. Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. His work includes major field experiments on responses of California grassland to multi-factor global change, integrative studies on the global carbon cycle, and assessments of impacts of climate change on agriculture.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards seek to recognize and encourage world-class research and artistic creation, prizing contributions of broad impact for their originality and theoretical significance. The BBVA Foundation is part of the corporate social responsibility arm of the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA Group) – a multinational Spanish banking group.
Previous recipients of the same award include U.S scientist and former IPCC Working Group I Co-Chair Susan Solomon.