Bren School research has a significant global impact on the most critical environmental challenges of our day, including climate change, ecology and conservation, water resources, and ocean health.
Bren School faculty members conduct research in a variety of disciplines, and across disciplines, to solve environmental problems. At Bren, our research is highly collaborative, both within the UCSB research community and with researchers at other institutions and organizations across the world.
Our faculty members play leading roles in advising government agencies, corporations, and nonprofit organizations about science, management, and policy questions. They provide intellectual leadership about the direction of environmental technology, science, and policy, and bring a comprehensive understanding of these issues to their teaching and research.
Bren School faculty and lecturers are subject matter experts in many areas that span the biological and earth sciences, data science, law, politics, and more under the umbrella of environmental science and environmental management. They are knowledgeable experts on topics such as climate change, ocean health, sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, wildfires and drought, water management, environmental justice, conservation and ecology, pollution, agricultural practices, corporate sustainability, data science, environmental policy and politics, environmental economics, and environmental law.
Subject Matter Expertise Directory:
Bren Faculty
Environmental Politics
Environmental Institutions and Governance
Hydrology, Terrestrial Ecology, Coupled Natural-Human Systems
Environmental Justice
Resource Economics
Energy Systems, Economics, and Policies
Global change ecology, forest disturbance, climate change
Environmental Data Science
Industrial Ecology
Marine Ecology, Conservation Planning
Environmental Economics, Land System Science
Environmental Microbiology
Hydrology, Water Resources, Groundwater
Fate and Transport, Watershed Management, Remediation, Pollution Prevention
Conservation Biology, Population Ecology, Ecological Modeling
Agricultural Ecology, Land Use, Landscape Ecology
Applied Marine and Fisheries Biology
Global Change Ecology, Disease Ecology, Environmental and Human Health
Energy System Analysis, Climate Change Mitigation, Sustainable Manufacturing, Data Centers & ICT
Environmental Economics
Biodiversity, Climate Change, Ecology
Environmental Communication, Oceanography, Geochemistry, Science Policy
Resource Economics, Land Use Economics
Corporate Environmental Management
Environmental Law
Climate Modeling, Drought, Oceanography, Climate Dynamics
Ecohydrology and Ecoinformatics
Ecology, Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning
Affiliated Faculty & Researchers
Faculty in Environmental Studies and History Departments
Professor, Department of Economics
Professor, Department of Earth Science
Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Professor, Department of Statistics and Applied Probability
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics
Dehlsen Chair, Department of Environmental Studies
Water Resources Engineering, Groundwater Science and Policy
Rupe Chair, Department of Communication
Professor, Department of Geography
Professor, Department of Political Science
Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics
Sustainable Land Use, Climate Change Mitigation, Renewable Energy Planning, Land Systems Science
Adjunct Faculty
Marine Conservation
Climate Change, Conservation Planning
Wildfire Dynamics
Water Policy
Fisheries Science and Management
International Environmental Law and Policy
Teaching Faculty & Lecturers
Eecohydrology, Earth observation techniques (remote sensing and GIS), and process-based modeling
Environmental Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Environmental Data Science
Fisheries, marine conservation, climate change
Environmental and Administrative Law
Research data management, scientific reproducibility, digital preservation, digital libraries, and data science and literacy
Applied statistics, data science, biodiversity, environmental DNA, invasive species
Intentional Media, environmental media campaign design, impact media, ocean stories
Strategic Environmental Communication & Media
Environmental Social Science
Network models of natural resource governance, sustainable fisheries, sea level rise adaptation, and the science of science communication.
President and CEO of the National Park Foundation
Corporate water stewardship, integrated water management, California water policy, and global water governance
Energy and climate, engineering, and industrial decarbonization
The Faculty Experience: How Bren Professors Work
Get to know Bren faculty and their interdisciplinary research projects, from coral reefs in Mo'orea to climate change and loss of biodiversity.