Member Profile
Ross Virginia
Ambassador Explains Danish Perspective on the Arctic
The Danish Ambassador to the U.S., Peter Taksoe-Jensen, explained to IGERT Fellows in a public talk on November 8, 2011, the Danish perspective on challenges facing the Arctic, in particular, Greenland, which... More »
About Me
I completed my Ph.D. in Ecology at the University of California, Davis in 1980 where I studied elemental cycling and nitrogen isotope abundance in natural ecosystems. I received postdoctoral training in Soil and Environmental Science at the University of California Riverside where I studied desertification in the aridlands of southern California and New Mexico. Prior to joining Dartmouth as Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies in 1992, I was Professor of Biology and Director of the Systems Ecology Research Group at San Diego State University (1985-92).
My interests center on ecosystem science and the how climate change affects elemental cycling in terrestrial systems. My polar interests began in 1985 with research at Toolik Lake, Alaska on carbon storage and flux in Arctic tundra soils. In 1989 I shifted my work to the south and began work in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, research that continues today. My lab seeks to understand how climate and soil factors control the establishment, distribution and function of microscopic soil animals that may serve as sensitive indicators of environmental change and human disturbance. I am interested in how soil resource legacies (organic matter, soil chemistry) from past climates determine the present and future functioning of plant and soil life in polar deserts. I am a co-principal investigator on the NSF McMurdo Dry Valley Long-Term Ecological Research Program (http://www.mcmlter.org/).
I’ve always been interested in how science, law and policy interact. I have served on the Board and as President of the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers (AERC), a national professional organization that promotes ecosystem science and its applications to environmental policy. I direct the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College (a unit of the Dickey Center for International Understanding). The Institute has identified climate change and its influence on the social, cultural, and political dimensions of the North as an area of critical importance to the world. I am honored to be the principal investigator on the Dartmouth IGERT which is designed to training the next generation of polar scientists and engineers to have greater understanding of the human dimensions of rapid environmental change in the North. We are reaching out to form new partnerships with Greenlandic institutions, students, and the public to share knowledge about environmental change and to promote sustainable solutions to problems facing northern peoples.
