天美传媒

We have known for centuries that the earth and the sky have an intimate relationship.  

O鈥橦alloran has made it his mission to decipher the rhythmic, cyclical 鈥渃onversations鈥� between the land surface and the atmosphere of our world to better understand how and why they are connected. He climbs into the sky on four towers, up to 120-feet tall, scattered around the Lowcountry to listen. These days, he also treks to the quietest, most isolated parts of the wetlands, towing a customized trailer full of cutting-edge equipment to eavesdrop.

What he鈥檚 heard has been eye-opening 颅鈥� and sobering 鈥� for climate scientists, scholars and farmers.

O鈥橦alloran measures the emissions of gases like methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide released by the soil and ways with advanced sensors housed in the mobile lab. Nitrous oxide and methane, particularly, can strongly influence the climate. Better understanding the soil鈥檚 role in releasing these gases can help landowners increase profitability and help public policymakers manage land and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. O鈥橦alloran and his collaborators can use the data collected to, for example, valuate carbon credits in coastal wetlands and conservation easements on restored rice fields, or to understand how sea-level rise is affecting coastal ecosystems.

From the towers, which are stationed around Clemson鈥檚 Belle W. Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science, O鈥橦alloran measures the exchange of carbon, water and energy between the Earth鈥檚 surface and the atmosphere. He works with a team of international scientists to create a global map measuring the cooling effect forests have by regulating the exchange of water and energy between the Earth鈥檚 surface and the atmosphere, potentially a valuable tool in efforts to mitigate climate change.

O鈥橦alloran hopes his innovative approaches to studying the climate and forests, which also include the use of drones and satellites, will attract more young researchers into joining him in this important work.  

Bentley is a geographer who has teaching and research interests in weather-societal interactions and critical physical geography. This interdisciplinary research examines issues surrounding human-land-atmosphere interactions and works to untangle their complex, critical relationships.

Given the breadth of subjects found under the umbrella of geography, Bentley enjoys teaching a wide range of courses from climate change to understanding human cognition and environmental perception through film.

Bentley has plenty of media experience, having been a forecast meteorologist at The Weather Channel in Atlanta.
Bentley has a doctorate in geography from the University of Georgia, a master's degree in geography from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and bachelors degrees in geography and mathematics from Northern Kentucky University.

Tobias Gerken is a broadly trained environmental and atmospheric scientist teaching courses about environmental science and sustainability as part of the Integrated Science and Technology major. Topics include climate change, air and water pollution, ecological processes as well as global ecosystem change. 
His research focuses on land-atmosphere interactions. He is particularly interested in the surface flux dynamics of water, energy, and trace gases between ecosystems and atmosphere and their impacts on weather and climate.
He has also investigated the role of agricultural land management in the Northern Great Plains on rainfall and the role of feedbacks between land and atmosphere for the rapid development of drought.
Tobias Gerken has conducted field research in the Brazilian Amazon and on the Tibetan Plateau to better understand the exchange energy, water, and carbon dioxide between ecosystems and atmosphere and how this may be affected by environmental change and human activities.
He earned a Diplom (BSc & MSc equivalent) in environmental science and a doctorate in environmental and atmospheric science at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He formerly was an assistant research professor at Penn State’s Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science and a research associate at Montana State University’s Department of Land Resources and Environmental Science.