David Butman
- Assistant Professor
Research areas
Influence of humans and climate on carbon cycling at the intersection of terrestrial and aquatic systems
David studies the influence of humans and climate on carbon cycling at the intersection of terrestrial and aquatic systems. He measures the capacity of ecosystems to change as a result of anthropogenic carbon emissions; human landscape alteration, like logging or development; and the effects of climate change, in order to identify environmental stressors within watersheds and mitigate long term resource degradation.
He received the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, The Teresa Heinz Scholars for Environmental Research Scholarship, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Research Initiative, and the Tropical Resources Institute Fellowship from Yale.
B.A., Economics & Environmental Studies, Connecticut College
MESc., Environmental Science, Yale University
Ph.D., Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University
Courses
- ESRM 201 | Sustaining Pacific Northwest Ecosystems (5) - Autumn
- SEFS 512 | Biogeochemical Cycling in Soils and Forest Ecosystems (3) - Spring
Current Sponsored Projects
- Coastal Rainforest Margins Research Network - Understanding Materials Flux in Linked Terrestrial and Marine Systems in the Face of Climate Change
This project will develop a Coastal Rainforest Margins Research (CRMR) Network to facilitate collaborative research initiatives to quantify materials flux from coastal watersheds to coastal marine ecosystems, within the context of regional geographic variation and long term environmental change. - Ecosystem Services - Seminar Course SA Support
This project will provide support for a Staff Assistant to help facilitate a joint effort between the U.S. Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy, and the University of Washington to research how forest restoration activities in the Pacific Northwest affect key ecosystem services, such as water quantity and quality, carbon sequestration, and terrestrial carbon stocks. - Integration of Lateral and Vertical Carbon Flux Estimates
This project will produce an integrated carbon budget at the Rush Ranch wetland complex that identifies Coastal Californian wetland carbon flux patterns from seasonal to annual timescales, and the relative importance of individual processes controlling the overall wetland carbon storage capacity. - Magnitude and Controls on the Lateral Transport of Carbon via Steams and Rivers
This project will launch a systematic program to refine and scale-up what is known about inland water fluxes to the global scale. Activities will include creating the first database of measured greenhouse gas measurements for streams and rivers. - Vulnerability of Inland Waters and the Aquatic Carbon Cycle to Changing Permafrost and Climate across Boreal Northwestern North America
This project will take a cross-scale, integrated multidiscipline approach to collect and assemble accurate and defensible data to drive and accurately assess climate and landscape disturbance modeling of hydrologic, biogeochemical, and physical processes that affect ecosystem services across northern high latitudes.
Selected publications
Butman, D. E., Wilson, H. F., Barnes, R. T., Xenopoulos, M. A., & Raymond, P. A , Increased mobilization of aged carbon to rivers by human disturbance. 2015. Nature Geoscience 8:112-116 doi: 10.1038/ngeo2322
Clow, D. W., Stackpoole, S. M., Verdin, K. L., Butman, D. E., Zhu, Z., Krabbenhoft, D. P., & Striegl, R. G., Organic Carbon Burial in Lakes and Reservoirs of the Conterminous United States. 2015. Environmental Science & Technology 49(13):7614-7622 doi: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00373
Hotchkiss, E. R., Hall Jr, R. O., Sponseller, R. A., Butman, D., Klaminder, J., Laudon, H., Karlsson, J., Sources of and processes controlling CO2 emissions change with the size of streams and rivers. 2015. Nature Geoscience 8:696-699 doi: 10.1038/ngeo2507
Bianchi, T., F. Garcia-Tigreros, S. Yvon-Lewis, M. Shields, H. Mills, D. Butman, C. Osburn, P.A. Raymond, G.C. Shank, S. DiMarco, N. Walker, R. Mullins, A. Quigg, G. Aiken, E. Grossman. Enhanced Transfer of Terrestrially-Derived Carbon to the Atmosphere in a Flooding Event. 2013. Geophysical Research Letters, 40, 1-7, doi:10.1029/2012GL054145.
McDonald, C.P., E.G. Stets, R.G. Striegl, D. Butman, Inorganic Carbon Loading as the Primary Driver of Dissolved Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Lakes and Reservoirs of the Contiguous United States. 2013. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, doi:10.1002/gbc.20032