Downs, Martha

Organization(s):

Brown University

Martha Downs is an ecosystems ecologist and science writer. She has studied carbon and nitrogen cycling in temperate forests throughout the Northeastern U.S. using natural abundance and enriched stable isotopes.She has written for Science, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Technology Review, NPR, Small Times Media, and Women's E-News and has served as a communications professional in environmental, public health, emergency preparedness, and higher education organizations. She is particularly interested in the relationship between scientists and the media and how it facilitates (or distorts) public engagement with science and public understanding of risk.

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Martha Downs' website

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National Science Foundation (NSF) - The only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering, except for medical sciences. We are tasked with keeping the United States at the leading edge of discovery in areas from astronomy to geology to zoology. So, in addition to funding research in the traditional academic areas, the agency also supports "high-risk, high pay-off" ideas, novel collaborations and numerous projects that may seem like science fiction today, but which the public will take for granted tomorrow.

Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University - A center of excellence that integrates ecology with socioeconomics, demography, and other disciplines for ecological sustainability from local, national, to global scales.

Global Land Project - A joint research project for land systems in the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions Programme.

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Coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) are integrated systems in which humans and natural components interact. CHANS research has recently emerged as an exciting and integrative field of cross-disciplinary scientific inquiry, with research projects covering a variety of coupled systems in locations spanning the globe. Although individual projects have generated many important insights, it is essential to systematically transform the field to be more than the sum of its parts and provide broader insights of greater scientific and societal significance than those resulting from individual projects alone. The goal of CHANS-Net is to foster this transformation by facilitating communication and collaboration among members of the CHANS research community.

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Downs, Martha

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