Biography

Margaret S. Torn is Senior Advisor in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division (CESD) and lead of the Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions Program Domain, which includes the Atmospheric Systems Research and Terrestrial Ecosystems Science programs. Margaret co-led the former Climate and Carbon Sciences Program Area in the old Earth Sciences Division. She is lead PI for three large DOE-supported projects: AmeriFlux Management Project, Belowground Carbon Cycling Scientific Focus Area, and Land-Atmosphere Interactions, and is co-PI for the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment in the Arctic. At U.C. Berkeley, Margaret is an Adjunct Professor in the Energy and Resources Group, where she has taught classes on climate change impacts and adaptation, and a seminar on food systems. In 2003 she received the Presidential Early Career Award as one of the country’s top young scientists and was recently awarded an honorary doctorate by the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Zurich.

Margaret is an ecologist and biogeochemist who studies the natural carbon cycle and human impacts on the carbon cycle through land use, energy use, and climate change. Her research uses field experiments, isotopic tracers (¹⁴C, ¹³C), laboratory analysis, and mathematical models. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on topics ranging from the basic mechanisms of soil carbon cycling and ecosystem-climate feedbacks, to ecological aspects of bioenergy production, to strategies for climate-change mitigation.