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James N. Galloway - Sidman P. Poole Professor, Environmental Sciences, Associate Dean for the Sciences, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia

Introduction by John Hobbie

Lecture Abstract:
Humans obtain metabolic energy by eating food. Nitrogen is required to grow food, but natural supplies of nitrogen to grow food have been inadequate since the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Haber-Bosch process, invented in the early 20th century, now provides a virtually inexhaustible supply of nitrogen fertilizer. This one invention is responsible for the existence of about half of the world's population. That's the good news. The other news is that most of this nitrogen (and additional amounts from fossil fuel combustion) is lost to the environment where it contributes to smog, greenhouse effect, ecosystem eutrophication, acid rain and loss of stratospheric ozone in a sequential manner—the Nitrogen Cascade.

Dr. Galloway will illustrate how nitrogen is lost to the environment during food and energy production; describe the resulting impacts on human and ecosystem health due to the loss; show how the choices people make determine the magnitude of the loss; and describe the opportunities for an integrated nitrogen management plan at the local and national level.

There are numerous challenges facing society to optimize the use of nitrogen to provide food for the world's peoples, yet minimize the negative consequences on the environment. In his lecture, Dr. Galloway will address a key challenge: how scientists communicate the issues concerning nitrogen to both the public and to policy makers.

Dr. James Galloway is the Sidmon P. Poole Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and the Associate Dean for the Sciences in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. His research has contributed immensely to the growing understanding of how nitrogen cycles endlessly through the environment. Dr. Galloway was the founding chair of the International Nitrogen Initiative, which seeks to optimize the use of nitrogen in food production while minimizing the negative effects on human health and the environment.

Dr. Galloway received a B.A. from Whittier College and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He has been a professor in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia since 1976.

Numerous honors and awards and countless publications speak to Dr. Galloway’s invaluable contributions to the field. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. In 2008, he was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement—the premier award for environmental science, environmental health and energy. Dr. Galloway has been named a “highly cited researcher” by the Institute of Scientific Information in three separate categories: Ecology/Environmental Science, Geosciences, and Engineering, a distinction which honors the top 250 individuals who are the most highly cited. He has been a member of the EPA‘s Science Advisory Board and has chaired its Integrated Nitrogen Committee. Dr. Galloway has been a visiting scientist in the MBL’s Ecosystems Center every summer since 1995 and has spent sabbaticals at the MBL from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2002 and 2008
to 2009.

Dr. John Hobbie will introduce Dr. Galloway. Dr. Hobbie is a senior scholar and Distinguished Scientist at the MBL. He received a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and graduate degrees from U.C. Berkeley and Indiana University, all in zoology. After an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Limnology in Uppsala and 10 years at the department of zoology, North Carolina State University, he joined the MBL’s Ecosystems Center in 1976 and directed the Center from 1984 to 2006 (co-director with Jerry Melillo 1989 to 2006). Dr. Hobbie spent a year (1988 to 1989) as the Tage Erlander Visiting Professor at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Hutchinson Medal for Research and the Alfred Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society for Limnology and Oceanography, the Odum Award by the Estuarine Research Federation, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Hobbie directs the Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) research project in Arctic Alaska and also works on microbial ecology of oceans, lakes, and soils.