My name is Erwan Monier, I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis and I also serve as co-director of the UC Davis Climate Adaptation Research Center.
Research
My Global Environmental Change Lab brings together high school and undergraduate interns, graduate students and early career researchers to examine the co-evolution of human and natural systems in the face of global environmental change. Our Lab team uses interdisciplinary approaches to explore the impacts of climate and weather extremes and of management decisions on agriculture, forests, wildfires, and biodiversity, to examine the interactions between climate, air quality and health, and to understand the fate of the global biogeochemical cycles in the face of global environmental change. Our aim is to derive actionable information to support effective and adaptation and ensure a resilient, equitable, sustainable and prosperous world.
Teaching
My teaching focuses on the complex interactions between humans and our environment. I teach the Science and Society course "Crisis in the Environment", an undergraduate general education course that examines the causes, effects and solutions to a wide range of environmental problems facing the global ecosystem and that includes an emphasis on scientific writing literacy through writing training and assessment. I also teach a graduate course on "Climate Change Science and Impacts" that provides an overview of climate change science with an emphasis on climate literacy, climate models and climate communication and that examines the impacts of climate change on various sectors of the economy and ecosystem services. Finally, I teach an undergraduate course on "Biometeorology" that explores the relationship between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Occasionally, I have taught an undergraduate general education course on "Severe and Unusual Weather". Find out more information about my teaching, including course summary, learning outcomes, and syllabus, as well as my teaching philosophy.
Service
At UC Davis, I have had a number of responsibilities in support of undergraduate and graduate education and mentoring. I have been the lead graduate advisor for the Atmospheric Science Graduate Group since 2020 and also served as one of the Geography Graduate Group graduate advisors. I have been the Climate Change and Air Quality track advisor for the Environmental Science and Management major since 2019. In addition, I have served on various committees including the Academic Senate Committee on Courses of Instruction (COCI), the Undergraduate Council General Education Subcommittee, and the Graduate Council Courses Subcommittee among others. I was also a founding member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee of the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. Finally, since 2024, I have been the co-director of the UC Davis chapter of the EnvironMentors program, a science education and national college access program with a mission to mentor and motivate high school students in the sciences.
Outside the University, I am a member of the Facilitation Team of the MultiSector Dynamics community of practice and I have been serving as a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting program committee since 2015.
Education and training
Prior to joining the faculty at UC Davis, I was a researcher at MIT for 9 years. I worked at the Center for Global Change Science, which is now the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, and had secondary affiliations with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, and the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab. Before joining MIT, I received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science at UC Davis and obtained a M.Eng. in Hydraulics and Fluid Mechanics at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, ENSEEIHT.
Go Aggies!