Our Team

Dr. Bruce A Hungate is a Professor of Ecosystem Ecology at Northern Arizona University, and the Director of the US Department of Energy’s Western Regional Center of the National Institute for Climatic Change Research. He has bachelor’s degrees in Music, English, and Biology from Stanford University and a PhD in Integrative Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. He has published over 70 scientific articles on environmental issues. Dr. Hungate’s research focuses on the ecology of global warming, including human contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and how these emissions might be offset or mitigated. He also studies responses of natural ecosystems to environmental change, and how ecosystems affect the climate system. His research spans grasslands, woodlands, forests, and rivers in the temperate zone, boreal forests in Siberia, and tropical forests of the Amazon basin. Through teaching, research and outreach, Dr. Hungate hopes to raise awareness of the role of earth system science for managing global environmental change.

Dr. Matthew Hurteau is a forestry technical expert for ANSI and a researcher at the Western Regional Center for the National Institute for Climatic Change Research at Northern Arizona University. He has a bachelor of science in forestry from Northern Arizona University and a PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Hurteau’s research focus is on how changing climatic conditions will influence fire prone forests. He uses field based studies and modeling to examine the implications of different management actions on fire behavior, community composition, and carbon sequestration. Dr. Hurteau’s goal is to improve understanding of the feedbacks between forests and the climate system through research, education, and working with land managers.

Dr. George Koch is a Professor of Ecology and Plant Physiology at Northern Arizona University, and Associate Director of the US Department of Energy’s Western Regional Center of the National Institute for Climatic Change Research. He is a founder and serves on the Executive Committee of the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, which is devoted to interdisciplinary, interdepartmental, interagency research and outreach. Dr. Koch has B.S. and PhD degrees in Biology from Stanford University. His research focuses on understanding plant-environment interactions, including impacts of and feedbacks to global climate change. His work has been published in major scientific journals including Nature, Ecology, Oecologia, and picked up by the popular media including the New Yorker magazine, the New York Times, and National Public Radio. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Ecology, Plant Physiology, Interdisciplinary Climate Mitigation, and Global Environmental Change. Dr. Koch has participated in the Agriculture and Forestry Task Force of the Arizona Climate Change Advisory Group, helping to design a draft strategy for greenhouse gas emissions reduction by the State of Arizona.