How energy production and use influences climate and environment will be the focus of Penn State's newly awarded grant for the Northeastern Regional Center of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Institute for Climatic Change Research.

One of four Regional Centers formed under NICCR, which replaces the National Institute on Global Environmental Change established by Congress in 1989, Penn State's center will include research applicable to the region from Maine to Virginia and as far west as West Virginia.

Heading the new Center will be Dr. Kenneth Davis, associate professor of meteorology, with Dr. David Eissenstat, professor of woody plant physiology as associate director.

The other three centers' principal investigators are Southeastern, Robert Jackson, Duke University; Midwestern, Kurt Pregitzer, Michigan Technological University and Western, Bruce Hungate, Northern Arizona University. Dr. Jeff Amthor, DOE, will manage NICCR.

The DOE Regional Centers will distribute about $8 million over the next five years through a system of peer review proposals. Each Center will distribute just under $2 million to institutions proposing research that meets the DOE's goals. No institution will receive more than 25 percent of the monies and the host institutions are eligible to compete for the peer reviewed grants.

Some of the DOE highest priorities include experimentally investigating the effects of warming, altered precipitation, elevated carbon dioxide concentration, elevated ozone on terrestrial ecosystems, developing and evaluating models to predict the effects of climate change on regional terrestrial ecosystems and analyzing observations of the exchange of carbon and energy between ecosystems and the atmosphere to improve global climate and carbon cycle models.

While these guidelines apply to all four regions, each region has different ecosystems, population patterns, energy requirements and climate regimes. Within each region, a variety of different landscapes and environments exist.

The Centers are looking for research that anticipates what will happen under various climate change scenarios and how the ecosystems will respond to and influence climate change.

For more information, contact Dr. Davis at 814-863-8601 or by e-mail to: davis@meteo.psu.edu.

8/12/2005