Tier II Canada Research Chair in Land-Use and Land-Cover Change
627 Burnside Hall, 805 Sherbrooke Street W.
Montreal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada
Phone: (514) 398-8428; Fax: (514) 398-7437
email: navin dot ramankutty at mcgill dot ca
My C.V.
Please visit my lab webpage to read more about my research program.
Education/Bio
I started as an engineer, getting a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the P.S.G. College of Technology, in Coimbatore, India. During my final year, when memorizing the "iron-carbide diagram", I came to realize that it was not my thing. I was reading a popular book about climate change at that time, and my curiosity drove me to pursue a master's degree in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois. I arrived in the US at the age of 19, little knowing what to expect. I struggled with the new field of study in my first semester, but slowly settled down and started to discover my keenness for the topic of climate change. My M.S. research involved the use of climate models and observations over the last 150 years to identify the causes of climate change and examining the patterns of change. Over the course of my masters degree, I became increasingly concerned about the impacts of climate change on human societies. I therefore moved to the University of Wisconsin, to do a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies (with specialization in Land Resources). I dabbled in several different projects (climate change & food production, modelling global animal energetics, developing dynamic vegetation models) before settling on a PhD topic, to examine the role of human land use changes on terrestrial ecosystem functioning. I discovered my passion for working at the interface of research on climate, land use, and ecosystems during my PhD, and I continue this work today, as a professor in Geography and Earth System Science at McGill.
Research
My research lies at the interface of global land use change, climate change, and ecosystem functioning. I am interested in understanding how land use change, interacting with climate change, influences the structure and functioning of ecosystems. I am also interested in how these changes influence the provisioning of valuable resources such as food and freshwater. How do humans use the land today for growing food and grazing cattle? What kinds of crops are grown where, and why? What are their typical yields, and how much irrigation and fertilizer is applied? Can we develop global models to simulate how crop production might change into the future? What are the consequences of agricultural land use? How much of our deforestation is driven by food production, and what are the consequences? Are our land use practices degrading ecosystems in a way that jeopardizes our ability to provide resources such as food and freshwater to future generations? These are the kinds of questions that motivate my research program.
My work uses remote-sensing and census observations, geospatial data analysis, and numerical models. I have been developing global data sets of contemporary and historical agricultural land use practices to describe the impacts of land use on global ecosystems. I have been further developing and using numerical models of the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems and agro-ecosytems, often coupled to global climate models, to examine the consequences of land use activities for the global carbon cycle, food production, water resources, and climate. In general, my work tends to be global in scale, and synthetic in nature. However, I have recently embarked on a local-scale, field-based project in India, and hope to start some local/regional-scale projects in Canada.
Select Publications
Ramankutty, N., A. Evan, C. Monfreda, and J. A. Foley, Farming the Planet. Part 1: The Geographic Distribution of Global Agricultural Lands in the Year 2000, Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles, doi:10.1029/2007GB002952, in press.
Ellis, E. C., and N. Ramankutty, Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 6(8), 439-447.
Ramankutty, N., H. K. Gibbs, F. Achard, R. DeFries, J. A. Foley, and R. A. Houghton, Challenges to estimating carbon emissions from tropical deforestation, Glob. Change Biol., 13, 51-66; doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01272.x, 2007.
Ramankutty, N., C. Delire, and P. Snyder, Feedbacks between agriculture and climate: An illustration of the potential unintended consequences of human land use activities, Global and Planetary Change, 54, 79-93, 2006.
Foley, J.A., R. DeFries, G.P. Asner, C. Barford, G. Bonan, S.R. Carpenter, F.S. Chapin, M.T. Coe, G.C. Daily, H.K. Gibbs, J.H. Helkowski, T. Holloway, E.A. Howard, C.J. Kucharik, C. Monfreda, J.A. Patz, I.C. Prentice, N. Ramankutty, and P.K. Snyder, Global Consequences of Land Use, Science, 309, 570-574, 2005.
Ramankutty, N., J.A. Foley, J. Norman, and K. McSweeney, The global distribution of cultivable lands: current patterns and sensitivity to possible climate change, Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11 (5), 377-392, 2002.
Cramer, W., A. Bondeau, F.I. Woodward, I.C. Prentice, R.A. Betts, V. Brovkin, P.M. Cox, V. Fisher, J.A. Foley, A.D. Friend, C. Kucharik, M.R. Lomas, N. Ramankutty, S. Sitch, B. Smith, A. White, and C. Young-Molling, Dynamic responses of global terrestrial vegetation to changes in CO2 and climate, Global Change Biology, 7, 357-373, 2001.
McGuire, A.D., S. Sitch, R. Dargaville, G. Esser, J. Foley, M. Heimann, F. Joos, J. Kaplan, D.W. Kicklighter, R.A. Meier, J.M. Melillo, B.M. III, I.C. Prentice, N. Ramankutty, T. Reichenau, A. Schloss, H. Tian, and U. Wittenberg, The effects of CO2, climate and land-use on terrestrial carbon balance, 1920-1992: An analysis with four process-based ecosystem models, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 15, 183-206, 2001.
Ramankutty, N., and J. Foley, Estimating Historical Changes in Global Land Cover: Croplands from 1700 to 1992, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 13, 997-1028, 1999.
Foley, J.A., I.C. Prentice, N. Ramankutty, S. Levis, D. Pollard, S. Sitch, and A. Haxeltine, An Integrated Biosphere Model of Land Surface Processes, Terrestrial Carbon Balance, and Vegetation Dynamics, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 10, 603-628, 1996.
Teaching
Winter Semester (Jan-Apr)
ESYS 301 (Earth System Modelling), in the Earth System Science program (team taught with Prof. Bruno Tremblay)
This is an introductory modelling class taught at the undergraduate level. Students learn to conceptualize and build models of various components of the Earth system using the Stella modelling software. The course teaches system dynamics concepts such as stocks & flows and feedbacks.
GEOG 205 (Global Change: Past, Present, and Future) in Geography (team-taught with Prof. Gail Chmura)
This is an introductory course, aimed mainly at non-majors in Geography. It examines the changes that have occurred in the global environment, through the last 2 million years (Quaternary) to the present day, and the possible changes in this century associated with the greenhouse effect, climate change and land use change.
Fall Semester (Sep-Dec)
GEOG 530 (Global land and water resources) in Geography (team-taught with Prof. Bernhard Lehner)
This course explores the geographic distribution of our planet’s land and water resources as determined by physiography and human modifications, and their potential future trends through global environmental change. Several key regional case studies will supplement the global overview
GEOG 523 (Advanced Climatology) in Geography
This course will develop an understanding of the functioning of global terrestrial ecosystems and their interactions with climate and human land use activities. It will deal with climatology, ecology, and land use change at continental-to-global scales. The course will examine the physical, chemical, and biological processes through which terrestrial ecosystems interact with climate. It will also examine the human modification of terrestrial ecosystems through land use activities such as agriculture and deforestation. You will learn how scientists use global data sets and global climate and ecosystem models to understanding the functioning of the climate-vegetation-landuse system
ESYS 500 (Earth System Applications), in the Earth System Science program (team taught with the six new ESS professors)
Students in this course work on a semester-long research project. A single theme is chosen for each year, and they change based on the most current Earth system science issues. In 2006-07, the theme was "Global energy resources". In 2007-08, the theme is "Geo-engineering". Students are guided through the semester by the ESS faculty in developing their research question, identifying data sources, and working through their analysis and write-up. Students will integrate all aspects of Earth system theory, observations, and modelling while working on their project.