Greg Asner

About

Greg Asner is the director of ASU's Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science and serves as a professor based in Hawaii. He oversees ASU's science activities and is primarily affiliated with the School of Ocean Futures, with a secondary affiliation to the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. Dr. Asner is an ecologist recognized for his exploratory and applied research on land and ocean ecosystems at regional to global scales. He has published hundreds of scientific articles and has participated in numerous national and international programs with NASA, the U.S. State Department, and the United Nations. His research interests include land use, biodiversity, coral reefs, climate change, remote sensing, and communities, particularly in Hawaii. He has received multiple scientific and sustainability awards and is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Research topics

• Biology
• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Geography
• Agroforestry
• Geology
• Mathematics
• Political Science
• Atmospheric sciences
• Environmental resource management

Selected publications

• A “Global Safety Net” to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize Earth’s climate

  Science Advances · 2020 · 318 citations

  emissions from land conversion, and enhance natural carbon removal. This framework shows that, beyond the 15.1% land area currently protected, 35.3% of land area is needed to conserve additional sites of particular importance for biodiversity and stabilize the climate. Fifty ecoregions and 20 countries contribute disproportionately to proposed targets. Indigenous lands overlap extensively with the Global Safety Net. Conserving the Global Safety Net could support public health by reducing the pot…

  DOI

• Intermittency of Large Methane Emitters in the Permian Basin

  Environmental Science & Technology Letters · 2021 · 274 citations

  The Permian Basin is the largest and fastest growing oil and gas (O&G) producing region in the United States. We conducted an extensive airborne campaign across the majority of the Permian in September–November, 2019 with imaging spectrometers to quantify strong methane (CH4) point source emissions at facility-scales, including high frequency sampling to evaluate intermittency. We identified 1100 unique and heavy-tailed distributed sources that were sampled at least 3 times (average 8 times), sh…

  DOI

• Taking the pulse of Earth's tropical forests using networks of highly distributed plots

  Biological Conservation · 2021 · 179 citations

  DOI

• Active restoration accelerates the carbon recovery of human-modified tropical forests

  Science · 2020 · 122 citations

  More than half of all tropical forests are degraded by human impacts, leaving them threatened with conversion to agricultural plantations and risking substantial biodiversity and carbon losses. Restoration could accelerate recovery of aboveground carbon density (ACD), but adoption of restoration is constrained by cost and uncertainties over effectiveness. We report a long-term comparison of ACD recovery rates between naturally regenerating and actively restored logged tropical forests. Restorati…

  DOI

• Carbon declines along tropical forest edges correspond to heterogeneous effects on canopy structure and function

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 86 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Nearly 20% of tropical forests are within 100 m of a nonforest edge, a consequence of rapid deforestation for agriculture. Despite widespread conversion, roughly 1.2 billion ha of tropical forest remain, constituting the largest terrestrial component of the global carbon budget. Effects of deforestation on carbon dynamics in remnant forests, and spatial variation in underlying changes in structure and function at the plant scale, remain highly uncertain. Using airborne imaging spectroscopy and l…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Doctoral Dissertation Research: Predicting the spread of Rapid Ohia Death and detecting resistant varieties of Metrosideros polymorpha

  NSF · $31k · 2022–2025

• Collaborative Research: Developing integrated trait-based scaling theory to predict community change and forest function in light of global change

  NSF · $215k · 2015–2019

• Collaborative Research: Disturbance, Succession, and Nutrient Availability: Patterns, Mechanisms, Interactions

  NSF · $299k · 2007–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Roberta E. Martin

  Arizona State University

  219 shared

• David Knapp

  Applied Materials (United States)

  203 shared

• Nicholas R. Vaughn

  Arizona State University

  96 shared

• Michael Keller

  International Institute of Tropical Forestry

  81 shared

• Jiwei Li

  Arizona State University

  79 shared

• Stuart Phinn

  70 shared

• Nicholas Murray

  James Cook University

  69 shared

• Chris Roelfsema

  University of Queensland

  69 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Ecology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1995

• M.S., Ecology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1991

• B.S., Ecology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1988

Awards & honors

• multiple scientific and sustainability awards
• elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences

Similar researchers at Arizona State University

• Philip Christensenh-130
• Alexandra Navrotskyh-105
• Larry Nittlerh-104