Robert B. Jackson
Professor

+1 919 660 7408

French Sciences 3311

Jackson's Lab Page Physiological Ecology Section - ESA

Research Interests: Physiological and ecosystem ecology; biogeochemistry

Robert B. Jackson is the Nicholas Chair of Global Environmental Change and a professor in the Biology Department. His research examines how people affect the earth, including studies of the global carbon and water cycles, biosphere/atmosphere interactions, and global change.

Rob Jackson received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Rice University (1983). He worked four years for the Dow Chemical Company before obtaining M.S. degrees in Ecology (1990) and Statistics (1992) and a Ph.D. in Ecology (1992) at Utah State University. He was a Department of Energy Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow for Global Change at Stanford University and an assistant professor at the University of Texas before joining the Duke faculty in 1999. He is currently Director of Duke's Center on Global Change and Duke's Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory. In his quest for solutions to global warming, he also directs the new Department of Energy-funded National Institute for Climate Change Research for the southeastern U.S. and co-directs the Climate Change Policy Partnership, working with energy and utility corporations to find practical strategies to combat climate change.

Jackson has received numerous awards, including the Murray F. Buell Award from the Ecological Society of America, a 1999 Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the National Science Foundation (one of 19 scientists honored at the White House by President Clinton), a Fellow in the Amercan Geophysical Union, and inclusion in the top 0.5% of most cited scientific researchers (http://www.isihighlycited.com/). He has more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is co-editor of the book "Methods in Ecosystem Science" (Springer, 2000). His trade book on global change, The Earth Remains Forever, was published in October of 2002. His first children's book, "Animal Mischief", waspublished in March of 2006 by Boyds Mills Press, the trade arm of Highlights Magazine for children. The sequel, "Not Again", is due out next year.

Jackson's research has been covered in various newspapers and magazines, such as the Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Scientific American, and BusinessWeek, and on national public radio, including the syndicated programs "Morning Edition", "All Things Considered", "Marketplace", "The Tavis Smiley Show", "The Next 200 Years", and "Earth and Sky" (for which he is a science advisor and scriptwriter). He conceived and organized the Janus Fellowship, an annual undergraduate award to encourage the study of an environmental problem from diverse perspectives; 1999's first recipient traveled down the Nile River to examine water use and water policy in Egypt.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. Tang, RH, S Han, H Zheng, CW Cook, CS Choi, TE Woerner, RB Jackson, Z-M Pei, Coupling diurnal cytosolic Ca2+ oscillations to the CAS−IP3 pathway in Arabidopsis, Science, vol. 315 (2007), pp. 1423-1426 .
2. Fierer, N., RB Jackson, The diversity and biogeography of soil bacterial communities, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 103 (2006), pp. 626-631 .
3. Jackson RB, EG Jobbágy, R Avissar, S Baidya Roy, D Barrett, CW Cook, KA Farley, DC leMaitre, BA McCarl, B Murray, Trading water for carbon with biological carbon sequestration, Science, vol. 310 (2005), pp. 1944-1947 .
4. Jackson, RB, JL Banner, EG Jobbágy, WT Pockman, DH Wall, Ecosystem carbon loss with woody plant invasion of grasslands, Nature, vol. 418 (2002), pp. 623-626 .
5. Gill, RA, HW Polley, HB Johnson, LJ Anderson, H Maherali, RB Jackson, Nonlinear grassland responses to past and future atmospheric CO2, Nature, vol. 417 (2002), pp. 279-282 .
6. Sala, OE, FS Chapin III, JJ Armesto, R Berlow, J Bloomfield, R Dirzo, E Huber-Sanwald, LF Huenneke, RB Jackson, A Kinzig, R Leemans, D Lodge, HA Mooney, M Oesterheld, NL Poff, MT Sykes, BH Walker, M Walker, DH Wall, Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100, Science, vol. 287 (2000), pp. 1770-1774 .