Robert B. Jackson, Professor  

Robert B. Jackson

Education:
PhD, Utah State University, 1992
M.S. Statistics, Utah State University, 1992
M.S. Ecology, Utah State University, 1990
B.S. Chemical Engineering, Rice University, 1983

Office Location: FFSC: 3311
Office Phone: (919) 660-7408
Email Address: jackson@duke.edu
Web Page: http://www.biology.duke.edu/jackson
Additional Web Page: http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/ccpp/

Specialties:
terrestrial ecosystems
energy
biodiversity
biogeochemistry
water quality
global climate change
land use and sprawl
soil science
air quality
hydrofracking

Research Categories: Ecology and biogeochemistry, global change, energy and environment, water resources

Research Description: Robert B. Jackson is the Nicholas Chair of Global Environmental Change at the Nicholas School of the Environment 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, energy use, 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 Department of Energy-funded National Institute for Climate Change Research for the southeastern U.S. and co-directed 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 American Geophysical Union and Ecological Society of America, and inclusion in the top 0.5% of most cited scientific researchers (http://www.isihighlycited.com/). His 175+ peer-reviewed scientific publications have been cited more than 17,000 and 30,000 times in Web of Science and Google Scholar, respectively. His trade book on global change, The Earth Remains Forever, was published in October of 2002. His first children's book, "Animal Mischief", was published in March of 2006 by Boyds Mills Press, the trade arm of Highlights Magazine for children. Its sequel, "Weekend Mischief", appeared in 2010.

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. Osborn, SG, A Vengosh, NR Warner, RB Jackson, Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing, PNAS, vol. 108 (2011), pp. 8172-8176 [pnas.1100682108] .
  2. Pan Y, RA Birdsey, J Fang, R Houghton, PE Kauppi, WA Kurz, OL Phillips, A Shvidenko, SL Lewis, JG Canadell, P Ciais, RB Jackson, S Pacala, AD McGuire, S Piao, A Rautiainen, S Sitch, D Hayes, A large and persistent carbon sink in the world's forests, Science, vol. 333 (2011), pp. 988-993 [science.1201609] .
  3. Michalak AM, RB Jackson, G Marland, CL Sabine, and the Carbon Cycle Science Working Group, A U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan (2011) (U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program, Washington, DC.) [html] .
  4. LaTuga MS, JC Ellis, CM Cotten, RN Goldberg, JL Wynn, RB Jackson, PC Seed, Beyond bacteria: a study of the enteric microbial consortium in extremely low birth weight infants, PLoS ONE, vol. 6 (2011), pp. e27858 [journal.pone.0027858] .
  5. Jayawickreme DH, CS Santoni, JH Kim, EG Jobbágy, RB Jackson, Changes in hydrology and salinity accompanying a century of agricultural conversion in Argentina, Ecological Applications, vol. 21 (2011), pp. 2367-2379 [doi] .
  6. Jackson RB, JS Baker, Opportunities and constraints for forest climate mitigation, BioScience, vol. 60 (2010), pp. 698-707 .
  7. Little MG, RB Jackson, Potential impacts of leakage from deep CO2 geosequestration on overlying freshwater aquifers, Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 44 (2010), pp. 9225–9232 [doi] .
  8. Jackson RB, EG Jobbágy, MD Nosetto, Ecohydrology in a human-dominated landscape, Ecohydrology, vol. 2 (2009), pp. 383-389 .
  9. JK Eccles, L Pratson, RG Newell, RB Jackson, Physical and economic potential of geological CO2 storage in saline aquifers, Environ Sci & Technol, vol. 43 (2009), pp. 1962-1969 [es801572e] .
  10. Manzoni, S, RB Jackson, JA Trofymow, A Porporato, The global stoichiometry of litter nitrogen mineralization, Science, vol. 321 (2008), pp. 684-686 .
  11. 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 .
  12. 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 .
  13. 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 .
  14. 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 .
  15. 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 .
  16. 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 .