Observing Nature to Help Make Sense of a Complex World

Rafe Sagarin, a marine ecologist at the UA's Institute of the Environment, has received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to help society better understand and respond to security threats such as terrorism, infectious diseases and natural disasters.

A University of Arizona marine ecologist is among the 180 artists, scholars and scientists from the U.S. and Canada to receive a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship Award.

Rafe Sagarin, assistant research scientist at the Institute of the Environment, will use his $40,000, one-year fellowship to help complete two books.

One book, for Island Press, centers on how sciences, such as ecology, are returning to their roots in observation of the natural world, albeit with the aid of new technologies, to study large-scale environmental and social problems.

The second book, for Basic Books, summarizes five years of research and development Sagarin has conducted on biological adaptation to help society better understand and respond to security threats such as terrorism, infectious diseases and natural disasters.

Sagarin was "shocked and elated" to receive news that he won the prestigious fellowship.

"My fellowship application, as with all my ecological and environmental policy work, focused on the idea of observation of nature in its many forms, and how in this era of intensive global change, simple naturalistic observations are the key to understanding the world's complexity and uncertainty," he said.

Sagarin's research is multi-pronged. He studies responses of marine organisms and wetlands to climate change, illegal fishing, pollution and other human activities.

In that work he has used unusual data sets from writers, naturalists, artists and gamblers to recreate historical patterns of ecosystem change, including reconstructing changes to the Sea of Cortez since the famous expedition of writer John Steinbeck and ecologist Ed Ricketts, chronicled in Steinbeck's book, "The Log From the Sea of Cortez."

Sagarin also studies environmental policy, philosophy and history and is documenting the transformation in science back toward primarily observational, rather than experimental, methods of learning.

In addition, his Natural Security Project examines how examples of adaptation and evolution in nature can be used as a guide for improving our own security. The project produced the volume Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World (UC Press 2008) that Sagarin co-edited.

Sagarin joined the UA in 2009 after working as a researcher at University of California, Los Angeles and Duke University. At the UA he also is an assistant adjunct professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment.

He is the second Institute of the Environment staff member to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. Jonathan Overpeck, the institute's co-director and a professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences, received the honor in 2005.

Guggenheim fellows are chosen on the basis of "prior achievement and exceptional promise," according to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

The winners in the 87th annual U.S. and Canadian Guggenheim competition were chosen from a group of nearly 3,000 applicants. In all, 74 academic institutions and 62 disciplines are represented by this year's Guggenheim Fellows.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was established in 1925 by former U.S. Sen. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim to "add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding." The foundation has granted nearly $290 million in fellowships to more than 17,000 people.

Provided by University of Arizona