Areas of Interest: Ecosystem ecology; the impacts of land use history, climate change, and natural disturbances on forest ecology, as well as the role of science in the development of environmental policy.
Steven Hamburg is an ecosystem ecologist specializing in the impacts of disturbance on forest structure and function. His research activities have most recently focused on linking climate change impacts to climate change mitigation, including in the corporate sector. He has served as an advisor to both corporations and non-governmental organizations and was awarded an Environmental Merit award by the US Environmental Protection Agency for his climate change-related activities.
He is currently on leave from Brown as chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. He is the vice chair of the International Long-term Ecological Research Network, whose first secretariat was established at Watson.
He has published widely including in Nature and Science and has served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Hamburg came to Brown in 1995 after spending a year at Environmental Defense working on climate change-related issues and nine years at the University of Kansas, where he directed the Environmental Studies Program and served as Environmental Ombudsman. He received his graduate training at Yale University, held a post-doctoral position at Stanford University, and was a Bullard Fellow at Harvard University.