Programs

of the Woods Hole Research Center

In the new full world science has a new and burdensome set of challenges while the biophysical limits of the earth are being tested at every turn. In proportion to the need, science is small and must compete with the shrill voices of commerce for the public's attention even as it concerns the most fundamental elements of the public interest.

In that context scientists must ask, What is important? How can we focus our efforts to gain the most leverage in keeping a vulnerable global biophysical system functioning in support of all?

For the Woods Hole Research Center the answer has been to focus on the largest and most threatening disruption, climatic change and its biological causes and consequences. Our program on the global carbon cycle is integral to an understanding of this problem and our program on science in public affairs supports policy mechanisms that will help nations control the global appetite for oil and coal.

The Center has research programs dealing with forests around the world. Our programs give us primary data on the changes in land use around the world and enable better appraisals of the trends in forests that influence their role in the global carbon budget.

Each of our programs of science and policy contributes to the training of future experts and leaders in environmental science and public affairs. In addition, we have acquired an exceptional teaching instrument in the form of the building that we have occupied since the spring of 2003.

It is a building with a story. A building that is warmed and cooled with water drawn from the bottom of a 1,200-foot-deep well and powered by the sun and the wind. As an institution, we have far exceeded the goals of the Kyoto Protocol while living in the most comfortable and modern of buildings. This is a lesson that is already traveling widely as others move to emulate our successes, engage our architects and builders, and adopt our principles as well as our methods and economies.

©Woods Hole Research Center, 2008