Researcher of the Month

Dr. Peter Snyder

Peter Snyder, as with many of our CWACES affiliates, brings a diverse set of experiences and techniques to the University of Illinois. A California native, Dr. Snyder completed his B.S. in Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which was known for its expertise in remote sensing at the time he received his degree. Dr. Snyder then earned his M.S., also in Geography, at the University of Georgia in 1991, with a geomorphological focus. He examined how various drainage basins are represented in digital elevation models (DEMs), and how these representations could be peformed automatically in DEMs, which was a new concept at that time. After earning his Masters, Dr. Snyder was then employed by a west coast “think tank” and an environmental engineering company for about 8 years, where he worked on military and environmental engineering research.

Beginning in 1998, Dr. Snyder decided to pursue a Ph.D., which he earned in 2004 from University of Wisconsin, Madison in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. His work on the doctoral degree began with examining the coupling of a land-surface model with a regional climate model for the large-scale biosphere-atmosphere (LBA) experiment in the Amazon, which was a NASA project. Then, working under his main advisor, Jon Foley, Dr. Snyder engaged in a two-pronged research agenda. The first examined the effects that vegetation has on the global climate, by using a coupled atmosphere-biosphere model to quantify how different biomes impact Earth climate, which until that time, no prior researcher had accomplished. The second part of his doctoral research examined teleconnection mechanisms in the Earth system. For example, with both deforestation and land cover change, Dr. Snyder was interested in how the result of those changes cause a signal to propagate to other regions of the globe. This concept was also relatively new at the time.

Dr. Snyder was hired by the University of Illinois in 2004 as part of the CWACES hiring initiative. Today, Dr. Snyder is still using atmosphere-biosphere models in his work, and is pursuing many of the same research directions that he began in Madison. However, at Illinois, he has been expanding his research horizons northward to the Arctic, a region for which he has engaged in climate modeling . He interacts with the Polar research community and uses their field data to improve and calibrate his model. The basic premise is that through global climate change, warming has been  greatest in the high latitudes and this warming is causing a “greening up” of these regions. This raises concern that the effect of increased vegetation growth in the Arctic could propagate globally, influencing world climate. The goal is to use the model to evaluate the terrestrial ecosystem response to high-latitude warming for future climate change projections. Not only will this research allow for a better understanding of how “greening up” affects Arctic climate,  it will also increase our knowledge of the impacts upon Northern Hemisphere climate dynamics. For example, how will Northern Hemisphere polar cyclones in Siberia be affected? What will be the effect upon Northern Hemisphere storm tracks and dynamics?

In addition, Dr. Snyder has developed additional aspects to his UIUC research agenda.He is interested in the effects of agricultural land practices on the hydrologic cycle, including how the land management practices of irrigation, mechanization, and fertilization can impact drought persistenceand fluvial events. Dr. Snyder is using a model, AGRO-IBIS, and a coupled global climate model to examine the effects upon the atmosphere caused by agricultural changes, for which experiments were conducted in the 20th century. The difference here is that the agricultural land management practices (including mechanization and fertilizer use) are now included.

He is also interested in research involving carbon sequestration. It has been debated that if more trees are planted, more carbon will be sequestered and the climate will not warm as much. However, because the albedo of forests is so much lower than for bare ground or grasslands, the land surface will attain a higher temperature than if the trees were not present. This debate has received national attention primarily because most research has assumed that snow cover will stay the same for higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Under elevated CO2 conditions, snowfall amounts may in fact decrease, and with a subsequent decrease in snow cover, trees that are planted will at least offset some of the warming by sequestering carbon even if the albedo remains low. Dr. Snyder is involved in a methodical examination of all the biophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks that may shed light on this ongoing debate.

Dr. Snyder is happy to be affiliated with CWACES, and believes the center is a great idea, as a greater demand on water can be anticipated in the future with continual climate change and an increasing population. This comes at a time when the scientfiic community does not have as much of an understanding of the global water cycle as is necessary to meet these concerns. Bringing multiple scientists together under a collaborative framework is necessary to advance reseearch on topics related to water issues, so that these concerns may be addressed.