About Our Lab

We study how climate and other environmental changes affect ecosystems, resources, and society, and how those risks can be understood and managed


The Global Environmental Change Lab at UC Davis, led by Professor Erwan Monier, develops and applies quantitative approaches to understand how climate and other environmental stressors affect Earth systems, ecosystems, and society.

We combine climate and Earth system science, process-based modeling, data science, observational analysis, and impact assessment to investigate environmental change across scales—from physical and biogeochemical processes to impacts on agriculture, water resources, ecosystems, air quality, and human health.

The questions that guide our research

Our research is organized around three interconnected questions.

  1. How is the Earth system changing?
    We investigate how climate variability and change, extreme events, land use, pollution, and other human influences alter the physical, ecological, and biogeochemical processes that govern the Earth system.
    Our work examines changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, wildfire, and global and regional biogeochemical cycles, including carbon, nitrogen, and mercury.
    Examples: climate and weather extremes • terrestrial ecosystems • marine ecosystems • wildfire • carbon cycle • biogeochemical cycling
  2. How do those changes propagate through coupled human–Earth systems?
    Environmental change creates consequences that extend far beyond the physical climate system. We study how changes in climate and ecosystems propagate through agriculture, water resources, air quality, human health, biodiversity, and other interconnected natural and human systems.
    By linking environmental drivers with system responses, we seek to understand not only where impacts occur, but also the processes and interactions that create them.
    Examples: agriculture and food systems • water resources • forests • air quality • human health • ecosystem services
  3. How can we quantify risk and enable adaptation?
    We develop modeling and analytical frameworks to characterize risk, uncertainty, resilience, and adaptation under environmental change.
    Our work integrates process-based models, empirical and statistical approaches, large observational datasets, and high-performance computing to evaluate future risks, test adaptation strategies, and provide actionable information for communities, ecosystems, and decision makers.
    Examples: climate-risk assessment • uncertainty analysis • adaptation • resilience • scenario analysis • decision support

Modeling platforms

The lab develops and applies complementary modeling platforms to investigate different components of this system. For example, our Lab contributes to the development of the Global Dynamical and Structural Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (GDSTEM) that supports research on terrestrial ecosystems, carbon cycling, land-use change, and wildfire. We have also developed a version of the FAO crop model AquaCrop to examine crop–water interactions, climate risk to agriculture, and agricultural adaptation. We also use and evaluate the E3SM climate model km-scale and higher resolutions and its ability to simulate energy generation accurately. Finally, empirical and integrated modeling approaches extend this framework to air quality, human health, marine ecosystems, and other environmental systems.

Research, collaboration, and mentorship

The Global Environmental Change Lab brings together high school students, undergraduate students, graduate researchers, early-career scientists, and collaborators across disciplines and institutions. Our research program combines the development of new scientific tools with interdisciplinary collaboration and the training of the next generation of environmental scientists.

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