Dr. Brent Yarnal Named "First Architect of the Geoscope"

October 27, 2003

Global climate change scientist and professor of geography Dr. Brent Yarnal was recently named "Architect of the Geoscope", an international award presented for his work with the Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) collaborative project. The goal of "Sustainability Geoscope" project, based at the University of Postdam, Germany, is to develop ways of studying, assessing, and monitoring the sustainability of places.

The award—three bottles of olive oil, one each from Spain, Italy, and Greece—was presented at the 2003 Open Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Change Research Community in Montreal last week. "Although the award certainly is no big deal, in my little corner of the world it's a signal that others think we're on the right track. The idea of giving prizes of olive oil, a polish goose, or bottle of wine signifies that we are doing the work for the fun of the science, not for the prize itself," said Brent.

"The term geoscope suggests that we would be putting an area under a special kind of geographical microscope—a geoscope," said Brent. "The competition looked for visions of what that geoscope might look like or what kind of infrastructure might realize the vision," he continued. Brent's submission, entitled "Infrastructure for Monitoring Global Change in Local Places" calls for an infrastructure, with protocols and data standards, that collaborating scientists can use to share their data, analyses, and ideas about local places. It also described the HERO project's current efforts to build such an online collaborative infrastructure.

Many groups sponsored the competition: The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, home of the Geoscope concept); the International Human Dimension Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP, an international, interdisciplinary, non-governmental science program located in Bonn); the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN, the international clearinghouse and repository for human dimensions data located at Columbia University); and the International Center for Integrated Studies (ICIS, the European equivalent of CIRA located at Maastricht University).

For more information about the Sustainability Geoscope project, visit www.sustainability-geoscope.net