Charlie Koven, earth system staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been awarded the 2017 Early Career Research Program award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to study weather events in the western United States. The DOE Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research will support Koven’s work as part of the Regional and Global Climate Modeling (RGCM) program.

Koven is one of 59 awardees from various fields nationwide to receive the award this year. The award will fund his research, “Vegetation Dynamical Responses to Multivariate Extremes in the Western US,” to better understand the role of environmental extremes. In particular, he will study high temperature and reduced precipitation on shaping ecosystem-level responses and feedbacks to environmental change via changes to vegetation, such as forest mortality.

RGCM has supported Koven for seven years, including research supported through the RUBISCO scientific focus area to understand permafrost and other ecosystem responses to global environmental change, and methods of benchmarking global land models. He is also a co-investigator and modeling lead on the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE-Tropics) project.

The Early Career Research Program, now in its eighth year, is managed by the DOE Office of Science and awards research grants to young scientists and engineers at U.S. universities and national laboratories. The grants are designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early years of their careers.

Koven will receive $2.5 million over the next five years to further his research. 

ECRP Title: Vegetation Dynamical Responses to Multivariate Extremes in the Western US