About

Lucy R. Hutyra is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. She received a B.S. in Forest Ecology and Management from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University for her thesis “Carbon and Water Exchange in Amazonian Rain Forests.” Dr. Hutyra’s current research centers on improving our understanding of the urban carbon cycle, particularly the role of vegetation and land use change on the flows of carbon between the biosphere and the atmosphere. She is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, has authored over one hundred scientific publications, and served as a Visiting Faculty Fellow at Google from 2023-2024.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Atmospheric sciences
• Botany
• Computer Science
• Biology
• Ecology
• Geography
• Physics
• Optics
• Mathematics
• Natural resource economics
• Chemistry
• Economics
• Geology
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Disruption of the oak tree microbiome with urbanization

  Nature Cities · 2025-10-03 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Regional Projections of the Impacts of Future Urbanization and Climate Change on Biogeochemical Cycles in New England Landscapes

  Research · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Human activities have had complex, long-term impacts on forest function across New England—a trend expected to continue. To assess these impacts, we conducted a regional-scale modeling study using the PnET-CN-daily model, simulating multiple scenarios that reflect projected changes in land cover, climate, and air quality. The results suggest that while New England will continue to serve as a regional carbon sink, carbon accumulation in the southern portion of the region will slow and may shift to a net carbon source due to aggressive urban expansion. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) fertilization and carbon loss associated with urbanization are the dominant factors controlling future carbon dynamics. However, CO 2 fertilization may diminish over time due to nutrient limitations, while rising temperatures are expected to accelerate soil decomposition, further increasing carbon loss. The forecasts also show that urbanization will increasingly affect ecosystem nitrogen storage. Climate change and CO 2 fertilization along with declining nitrogen deposition from decreases in fossil fuel use are projected to drive nitrogen oligotrophication—slowing forest growth and becoming more severe as nitrogen inputs decrease. In addition, urbanization and climate change are expected to substantially reduce snowpack and shorten snow cover duration in southern New England, with potential consequences for regional water dynamics. These trends highlight the need to integrate future climate, air quality, and land-use projections into forest management strategies for both urban and rural ecosystems.

  PublisherDOI

• Development of the United States GReenhouse Gas and Air Pollutants Emissions System (GRA ² PES)

  Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres · 2025-10-11 · 1 citations

  article

  Abstract In the U.S., emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants are often developed independently. Here, we describe the GR eenhouse gas A nd A ir P ollutants E missions S ystem (GRA 2 PES), which provides gridded emissions of fossil‐fuel carbon dioxide (ffCO 2 ) and 93 air quality (AQ) species for 17 combustion and non‐combustion sectors at 4 km × 4 km spatial resolution across the contiguous US. We find that the AQ emissions most spatially correlated with ffCO 2 are nitrogen oxides (NO x , ρ = 0.67), followed by sulfur dioxide (SO 2 , ρ = 0.51), carbon monoxide (CO, ρ = 0.44), and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 , ρ = 0.38). We evaluate GRA 2 PES ffCO 2 emissions with an ensemble of publicly available regional and global inventories at national (Normalized Mean Bias (NMB) = +1.4%), state (NMB = +1.5%, R 2 = 0.98), and urban (NMB = +11.5%, R 2 = 0.97) scales. Nationally, the differences of publicly available inventories from the ensemble average range from −10.0% to +5.7%, and consistency diverges at state and urban scales. We simulate GRA 2 PES ffCO 2 in a particle dispersion model and compare to measurements of radiocarbon ( 14 C)‐derived ffCO 2 collected in Los Angeles (August 2021), with results suggesting that GRA 2 PES ffCO 2 may be low by 19% for this city, but well within model‐observation differences for other publicly available inventories (−43% to +94%). GRA 2 PES AQ/ffCO 2 ratios converted to concentration space generally agree with field observations (NMB = +4%, log R 2 = 0.90). Lastly, we present a method by which to utilize GRA 2 PES to derive AQ emission fluxes from ffCO 2 emissions.

  PublisherDOI

• Ground‐Truth: Can Forest Carbon Protocols Ensure High‐Quality Credits?

  Earth s Future · 2025-05-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Forests have substantial potential to help mitigate climate change. Private finance channeled through carbon credits is one way to fund that mitigation, but market‐based approaches to forest carbon projects have been fraught to date. Public skepticism of forest carbon markets signals a need to closely scrutinize the system for certifying carbon credits. We rigorously reviewed and scored new and existing protocols for the voluntary and North American compliance carbon markets. We included protocols for forest projects engaging in improved forest management, afforestation/reforestation, and avoided planned forest conversion. Most protocols score poorly overall, and none were assessed as robust. Only one new protocol that had yet to issue credits at the time of our evaluation was assessed as satisfactory, owing to improvements in the approach to additionality demonstration. We conclude that existing protocols do not ensure carbon credits are consistently real, high‐quality, and accurately represent 1 tonne of avoided, reduced, or removed emissions. We offer recommendations for how protocols can be strengthened using existing data and new tools to promote reliably high‐quality credits. Continuing to rely on the status quo without such investments is a serious risk to climate change mitigation, and in our estimation, these proposed improvements would increase the likelihood that forests carbon projects can deliver their promised climate mitigation benefits.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Estimating high-resolution albedo for urban applications

  ArXiv.org · 2025-09-29

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Implementation of cool roofs is a high-impact pathway for mitigating heat at both global and city scales. However, while albedo estimates derived from Sentinel-2 are free and globally-available, the 10 m resolution is insufficient to resolve individual roofs. We present methods for increasing the resolution of Sentinel-2 albedo using high-resolution satellite imagery to produce albedo inferences at a 30-cm scale. Validating against high-resolution aerial albedo measurements over Boulder, CO we find improved precision and accuracy relative to Sentinel-2 with an RMSE of 0.04. Applying these methods to 12 global cities, we evaluate the impacts of three cool roof implementation scenarios. We find that cities can see up to a 0.5°C cooling effect from full scale implementation of cool roofs and prioritizing the largest buildings for implementation is a highly effective policy pathway. While Sentinel-2 produces accurate estimates of albedo change at larger scales, high-resolution inferences are required for prioritizing buildings based on their solar radiation management potential. This research demonstrates a scalable implementation of targeted cool roof interventions in neighborhoods with the greatest potential for heat mitigation by enabling actionable, building-level insights.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrated tree canopy expansion and cool roofs can optimize air temperature and heat exposure reductions in Boston

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2025-07-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Tree canopy expansion and albedo management represent pathways to reduce urban heat. Here we develop a statistical model to downscale coarse resolution estimates of air temperature and estimate marginal impacts of tree canopy and cool roof solutions across southern New England during 2021–2022. We quantify how tree canopy and cool roof solutions can be integrated to maximize heat exposure reduction, given feasibility and cost constraints. Afternoon estimates of air temperature cooling impacts from albedo and tree canopy cover fraction are −0.61 °C and −0.07 °C per increase of 0.1, respectively. Temperature reductions associated with tree canopy expansion are 35% higher than cool roofs, however, cool roofs on average provide higher heat exposure reductions due to implementation opportunities within dense, vulnerable regions of the city. Our Boston optimization identifies nearly twice as much area for cool roof implementation than tree canopy expansion. Cooling potential, implementation feasibility, and cost are critical considerations for identifying locally actionable, integrated climate solutions. Urban temperature reductions associated with tree canopy expansion are 35% higher than those of cool roofs in Boston, but cool roofs can have higher heat exposure reductions in dense regions of the city, according to an analysis of climate data and vulnerability-weighted heat exposure over 2021-2022

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Impact of weather extremes on the spatiotemporal dynamics of visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil

  PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025-07-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: Vector-borne diseases are highly sensitive to environmental and climatic conditions, which can directly affect vector behavior, parasite development, and transmission dynamics. Identifying the key meteorological drivers of these diseases and understanding the timing of their impacts is crucial for enhancing public health preparedness. This study focuses on visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in Brazil; a parasitic vector-borne disease spread by the bite of infected sandflies whose distribution is heavily influenced by environmental conditions. METHODOLOGY: We analyzed monthly confirmed VL cases from 2007-2022 using distributed lag nonlinear models within a spatiotemporal Bayesian hierarchical model framework to assess the nonlinear, time-lagged associations between locally defined weather anomalies and VL risk across space. We evaluated the exposure-lag-response relationships between anomalies in monthly average temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity; and VL incidence across Brazilian microregions, considering lags ranging from 0 to 4 months. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Among the 53,968 VL cases reported during the study period, the majority occurred in the Northeast and Central North regions. Our model revealed statistically significant nonlinear relationships between meteorological anomalies and VL risk. Associations were most pronounced in rural and deforested microregions, where climatic extremes intensified transmission risk. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: This analysis identified an increased VL risk at higher-than-usual temperatures and a lower risk with higher-than-usual humidity and precipitation across various lags. We offer novel foundational insights for the future development of early warning systems, especially relevant to regions like Brazil facing a substantial VL burden.

  PublisherDOI

• A U.S. Scientific Community Vision for Sustained Earth Observations of Greenhouse Gases to Support Local to Global Action

  AGU Advances · 2025-12-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Managing carbon stocks in the land, ocean, and atmosphere under changing climate requires a globally‐integrated view of carbon cycle processes at local and regional scales. The growing Earth Observation (EO) record is the backbone of this multi‐scale system, providing local information with discrete coverage from surface measurements and regional information at global scale from satellites. Carbon flux information, anchored by inverse estimates from spaceborne Greenhouse Gas (GHG) concentrations, provides an important top‐down view of carbon emissions and sinks, but currently lacks global continuity at assessment and management scales (<100 km). Partial‐column data can help separate signals in the boundary layer from the overlying atmosphere, providing an opportunity to enhance surface sensitivity and bring flux resolution down from that of column‐integrated data (100–500 km). Based on a workshop held in September 2024, the carbon cycle community envisions a carbon observation system leveraging GHG partial columns in the lower and upper troposphere to weave together information across scales from surface and satellite EO data, and integration of top‐down/bottom‐up analyses to link process understanding to global assessment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Urban trees vs. cool roofs: What’s the best way for cities to beat the heat?

  2025-07-23

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Modeling the seasonal and climate-dependent dynamics of visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil: Implications for transmission and Control

  Infectious Disease Modelling · 2025-11-25

  articleOpen access

  Background: sandflies, canine reservoirs, and human hosts, and are influenced by environmental and climatic variability. Mathematical models are critical tools for understanding these dynamics and identifying opportunities to effectively disrupt transmission. Methods: Our objective was to develop and calibrate a climate-informed mechanistic model of VL transmission in Maranhão, Brazil, and to evaluate the potential impacts of vector, environmental, and reservoir-targeted interventions. The model incorporates seasonally varying sandfly biting rates and vector recruitment and explicitly accounts for climate variability through the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Transmission rates between populations (human, canine reservoir, and sandfly vector) were calibrated using monthly reported human VL cases from 2007 to 2019 in Maranhão. We simulated the impact of four potential interventions on VL incidence: increased vector mortality, environmental sanitation (reducing vector maturation), expanded canine treatment, and increased canine culling. Results: The model accurately reproduced the observed temporal trends in monthly human VL cases in Maranhão and quantified the nonlinear effects of potential interventions. Vector control was the most effective standalone strategy, with a 10 % increase in sandfly mortality reducing human cases by 43 %, and a 90 % increase leading to a 96 % decline. Environmental sanitation was similarly impactful, with a 50 % reduction in sandfly maturation lowering cases by 72 %, and a 90 % reduction leading to a 97 % decline. Canine-focused strategies were less effective: expanded canine treatment reduced human cases only up to 69 %, while increased euthanasia had only modest effects. A combined intervention strategy was more effective than any individual measure, reducing cases by 61 % at just a 10 % increase in coverage and achieving substantially greater declines at higher levels. Conclusions: Climate variability and seasonal dynamics were key drivers of VL transmission in this setting. Our findings highlight the importance of integrating vector control and environmental management as core components of VL mitigation strategies. While canine-focused interventions may contribute incremental benefits, they are less effective than other interventions and are insufficient when implemented in isolation.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Water and Carbon Dynamics in Tropical Peat Lands -- Comparison of a Forested Peat Dome with a Deforested Peat Dome in Borneo

  NSF · $314k · 2011–2015

• CAREER: Assessing urban influences on ecosystem processes

  NSF · $567k · 2012–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Steven C. Wofsy

  110 shared

• S. R. Saleska

  University of Arizona

  79 shared

• J. William Munger

  Harvard University Press

  74 shared

• C. Gately

  Planetary Science Institute

  55 shared

• Andrew B. Reinmann

  The Graduate Center, CUNY

  50 shared

• Plínio Barbosa de Camargo

  Universidade de São Paulo

  50 shared

• Elizabeth Hammond Pyle

  Spaulding Hospital

  46 shared

• Bruce C. Daube

  Harvard University

  45 shared

Labs

• Hutyra Research LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Environmental Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  2000

• M.S., Environmental Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1996

• B.A., Environmental Studies

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1994