The Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

was founded in 1991 "to organize and promote interdisciplinary research on the nature, causes and impact of environmental change and to contribute to the development of management strategies for coping with future environmental change". In 2013/14 it had a research income of £4.7million, 50 active projects, 350 partners and 60 researchers working across 40 countries. The ECI's research is interdisciplinary in both outlook and approach. The Institute has worked on aspects of climate, energy and ecosystems and is developing expertise with food and water. ECI is involved in several long-term research projects, including th
UK Climate Impacts Programme
(UKCIP) which develops new tools to link climate science with business and government for innovations that can adaptat to the impacts of climate change and Climateprediction.net, the world's largest citizen science climate project with 350,000 individuals running climate simulations in order to better understand regional climate patterns. Staff of the institute have led EU consortium programmes including Impressions, studying the impacts and risks of extreme climate change; and co-ordinated GEM, a global ecological monitoring programme across remote forest locations in South America, Africa and Asia. The ECI also runs an MSc in Environmental Change and Management (ECM).

History

The Institute was established in 1991, following a £1M fundraising effort by the

Campaign for Oxford The University of Oxford has been running a series of fundraising appeals since 1988, under the name of the Campaign for Oxford. These appeals aim to raise funds for various academic and research purposes at the university, such as scholarsh ...

. It was originally called the Environmental Change Unit, and the first director was Martin Parry, who was in post from 1991 to 1994. The next director was Richard Macrory, from 1994 to 1995, followed by Jim Briden, from 1996 to 2003. In 1999, the unit was renamed the Environmental Change Institute. The Institute was led by Professor Jim Hall from 2011 until September 2018. He was replaced by Professor Michael Obersteiner.

Research

The ECI's research is organised around five main themes in climate, ecosystems, energy, food and water. There are expert teams in:
Biodiversity and climate adaptation

Climate impacts and adaptation

Ecosystem dynamics and

ecosystem services Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from Ecosystem, ecosystems. The interconnected Biotic_material, living and Abiotic, non-living components of the natural environment offer benefits such as pollination of crops, clean ...

Energy demand management

Extreme climate event attribution

Food security

Sustainable infrastructure systems

Tropical forests and carbon dynamics

Water security

References

1991 establishments in England Organizations established in 1987 Research institutes of the University of Oxford Research institutes in Oxford Environmental organisations based in England Environmental research institutes {{Oxfordshire-struct-stub