The Institute on the Environment’s Jonathan Foley looks at the big picture
Jonathan Foley didn’t set out to study ecosystems. He was more interested in planets. But, as it turns out, the two pursuits aren’t mutually exclusive. As the first permanent director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, which launched in 2008, Foley’s tendency to think big comes in handy. “When people mention the difficulty of thinking on a planetary scale,” says Foley, “my reaction is, ‘What’s so hard about that? It’s only one planet.’”
Foley, whose academic appointment is in the College of Biological Sciences Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, started out studying physics and astronomy. “The beauty of being trained in physics is that you simplify, you look for the common elements,” says Foley. “The scale becomes less relevant. It works from molecules to galaxies.”
From astronomy, the transition to atmospheric sciences came naturally. After all, atmosphere is the first thing scientists see when looking at a distant planet. “A lot of what happens in the atmosphere is dictated by biology,” says Foley, “so I started research on global ecosystems.”
Foley’s own research revolves around understanding large-scale ecosystem processes, global patterns of land use, the planet’s water and carbon cycles, and interactions between ecosystems and the atmosphere. While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he helped found the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. That experience prepared him for the daunting task of positioning the Institute on the Environment in a crowded field.
While in some respects the Institute on the Environment is late to the party—many similar undertakings got started 20 or even 30 years ago—Foley considers it an advantage. The Institute has the chance to see what’s worked and what hasn’t, and bypass the anti-establishment sentiment that permeated many earlier efforts. Foley sees an opportunity to break from the well-worn path and find an undiscovered niche for the University. “This is a good historical moment to do something fresh and leapfrog the others,” he says.
Foley’s vision for the Institute hinges on the same kind of interdisciplinary thinking and big picture approach that has propelled his own academic pursuits. But he also sees a need for pragmatism and an entrepreneurial spirit. “One of the primary criteria for Institute on the Environment projects is ‘does it have a chance of getting out into the world?’”says Foley.
The University of Minnesota is at an advantage in this regard. “People here want to do good science but also science that does good,” Foley says. He notes the close ties that already exist between the basic sciences and the applied sciences at the University. But interdisciplinary thinking isn’t enough. “It’s great that we’ve found the stairways that connect within the ivory tower, but we also need to find the doors to the outside,” Foley says. “We need a new vision of outreach that’s more global.”
Part of that vision involves reaching out to the community, which in the U of M’s case includes a number of Fortune 500 companies. Minnesota is among the top 10 states in terms of the number of such corporations headquartered here. Foley points out that the research supported by the Institute may help solve the state’s economic problems as well as climate change. And, characteristically, he’s thinking big, asking “Why can’t Minnesota be the Silicon Valley for sustainability?” — Stephanie Xenos
