
Rob Dunbar and Hatch
Address:
Dr. Robert B. DunbarDepartment of Earth
Systems Science
Geology Corner, Room 326
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2115
Phone:
(650) 725-6830
Dunbar Google Scholar
dunbar(at)stanford.edu

Dunbar
TED Talk
For Prospective Students:
See Papers by Advisees Section of my CV
Stanford Homepage
School of Earth,
Energy & Environmental Sciences
Stable
Isotope Biogeochemistry Lab (SIBL) located in rooms 332 and
334 of GreenEarth Sciences
Woods
Institute for
the Environment
Dunbar CV
Dunbar Youtube
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Nature
Photos
Earth
Systems
Program
ESS
Department
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Hopkins Marine Station
ESS Seminar Schedule
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My
research and teaching interests include Climate Change, Oceanography,
Marine Ecology, and Biogeochemistry. I am also engaged in the creation
of environmental policy that is directed towards solving key problems
involveing the oceans. My research group studies global environmental
change with a focus on air-sea interactions, tropical marine
ecosystems, polar climate change past and present, and the
biogeochemistry of elements involved in life processes in the sea,
e.g., oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon, to name
several.
Since arriving at Stanford in 1997 (from Rice University), I have
created and/or led a number of environmental acadmic programs. In
October, 2001, I became the founding director of a new Interdisciplinary
Graduate
Program
in
Environment and Resources (IPER, now Emmett-IPER),
a
position I held through 2005. In
January, 2003, I was appointed the
Victoria
P. and Roger W. Sant Director of the Earth
Systems
Program,the largest
undergraduate and co-terminal
masters program in the School of
Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences. In January, 2004, I was
named the J. Frederick and
Elisabeth B.
Weintz University Fellow in Undergraduate
Education. This fellowship is
in
recognition of teaching and mentoring of
Stanford undergraduate
students and is
the most meaningful honor I have ever
received.
I was named the William M. Keck
Professor of Earth Science in 2008, the same year
that I moved from the Department of
Geological and Environmental
Sciences (now the Department of Geological Sciences) to the newly created Department
of
Earth System
Science. In 2009, I was elected
as a Trustee for the Consortium
for
Ocean
Leadership
in Washington D.C. where I am active in promoting sound ocean policy as
well as federal funding for ocean research. In 2018 I was appointed to
the Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate of the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences. Over the past 15 years I have helped start new
tropical marine stations, run many field programs in Antarctica and the
tropics, and engaged in many types of international science exchange
and partnership. Details of some these activities can be found in my CV.
We
are currently working on several projects in Antarctica to assess the
impacts of climate change on Southern Ocean ecosystems and C-system
chemistry. Some of this work focuses on the Ross Sea where we are
studying the modern uptake of carbon dioxide by the ocean and the
sensitivity of primary production to changes in nutrients, temperature,
sea ice cover, and C chemistry of seawater. We are also using sediment
cores from fjords and shelf basins of East Antarctica and the Antarctic
Peninsula to study past and changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet. We are
also engaged in analysis of stable isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen in
seawater samples from along Antarctica's ice margins. This is a new
method, completely independent of satellite data, that shows promise
for the estimation of melt rates from Antarctica's continental ice
sheet. The method is easily transported to other ice margins in
Patagonia, Alaska, and Greenland.
I've
also begun an exciting new project working in the Chagos Archipelago,
British Indian Ocean Territory. With funding from the Bertarelli Programme in Marine Science
we are working with colleagues at Oxford University the Zoological
Society of London to understand biological, physical, and genetic
drivers of change in the regions coral reefs. Our project is part of a
much larger effort focussed on transformative scientific research
within one of the world's largest and pristine no-take Marine Protected
Areas.
My
group specializes in high resolution studies of climatic and
oceanic variability in modern lakes and oceans as well as during the
past 50 to 12,000 years. By understanding what natural climate
variability looks like in our recent past, we are better able to
understand man-made impacts on our climate system. To pursue this
research we use the skeletons of long-lived corals from the tropics and
the deep sea, as well as sediments from lakes and marine environments.
We use chemical, isotopic, and morphological measurements of these
materials to investigate the timing and rates of change associated with
past climate and C cycle excursions. Field areas include the American
Samoa, Antarctica, Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands, Patagonia, and
Palau.
After
years of only working in remote locations on the far side of the world,
I finally have a project in my backyard. Working with colleagues at Cal
State Northridge, MBARI, and Stanford, we have instrumented a Kelp
Forest at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove to examine
how the kelp community modifies seawater and is in turn impacted by
changes in seawater chemistry.
We
are also engaged in a
collaboration with colleagues in Civil
and Environmental Engineering at Stanford and MBARI to
develop instrumentation
and methodologies for better understanding and measuring ocean physics and biogeochemistry in coastal
marine systems.
I travel alot for my work and I am an avid nature
photographer. See
this page for
photographs from Antarctica, South Georgia,
Falklands, New
Guinea, Kamchatka, Australia, Palmyra, Palau,
American Samoa,
Argentina, Alaska, Chile, Japan, Maldives,
Seychelles, Mauritius, Chagos, Nepal, Greenland,
Iceland, and Africa. Some of my videos are posted
at my
youtube site.

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Education
- Ph.D.,
1981,
Oceanography, Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, UC San Diego
- B.S., 1975, Geology (with Special Honors),
University of
Texas, Austin
Employment
-
W.M. Keck
Professor of Earth Science, Stanford University,
2008-present
- Victoria P. and Roger W. Sant Director of the
Earth Systems Program
at Stanford, 2003-2011
- J. Frederick and Elisabeth B. Weintz University
Fellow in
Undergraduate Education, 2003-2013
- Professor of Earth System
Science, Stanford University,
2007-present
- Professor of Geological and Environmental
Sciences, Stanford
University, 1997-2007
- Founding Director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary
Graduate
Program in Environment and Resources,
2001-2005
- Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute of
International Studies,
Stanford
University, 1998-2010
- Senior
Fellow, Woods Institute for the
Environment, Stanford University, 2005-present
- Adjunct Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Rice
University,
1997-2000
- Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Rice
University, 1994-1997
- Visiting Scientist, National Geophysical Data
Center, 1994-1996
- Assistant/Associate Professor of Geology, Rice
University, 1982-1994
- Master, Baker College, Rice University, 1989-1994
- Visiting Fellow, Research School of Earth
Sciences, Victoria Univ. of
Wellington, New Zealand, 1988
- Visiting Scientist, Geology Department, University
of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1988
- Visiting Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences,
University of
California, San
Diego, 1981-82
Full
CV
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Classes
Taught
at
Stanford |
- GES 4: Undergraduate Seminar in Geological and Environmental Sciences
- GES 38N: Stanford Introductory Seminar: Science and History of Polar Exploration
- GES 41: Stanford Introductory Seminar, El Nino: History and
Predictability of a Global Climate Pacemaker
- GES 56: Stanford Introductory Dialog, Change in the Coastal Ocean: The View from Monterey Bay
- GES 56Q: Stanford Introductory Seminar, Change in the Coastal Ocean: The View from Monterey Bay
- GES 155: Biogeochemistry of the Southern Ocean
- GES 163: Introduction to Isotope Geology
- GES 164: Stable Isotope Geochemistry
- GES 205: Advanced Oceanography
- GES 206: Antarctic Marine Geology & Geophysics
- GES 254: Paleoceanography
- GES 257: Climate Variability and Forcing Mechanisms of the last 2000 years
- GES 290: Numerical Analysis of Geological Time Series
- ESS 182: Stanford @ SEA
- IPER 310: Environmental Forum Seminar
- EARTHSYS 210 Earth Systems Senior Seminar
- EARTHSYS 297 Directed Study and Creative Writing
- ESS 240 Advanced Oceanography
- ESS 242 Antarctic Marine Geology
- EARTHSYS 199 Honors Program
- OSPGEN 53 Corals of Palau: Ecology, The Physical Environment, and Reefs at Risk
- OSPGEN 12 Uttermost Part of the Earth The Intersection of Nature and the Human Enterprise in Patagonia
- OSPGEN 2020 Earth’s 3rd Pole: Coupled Human-Natural Systems in the Khumbu Valley, Nepal
- ESS 10SC In the Age of the Anthropocene: Coupled-Human Natural Systems of Southeast Alaska
- ESS 40 Approaching Palau: Preparation and Research Ideation and Development
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Publications
(see full
CV) |
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