Guests & Contributors

Laurence C. Smith

Laurence C. Smith is the John Atwater and Diana Nelson University Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. Previously, he was Professor and Chair of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include the Arctic, water resources, and satellite remote sensing technologies. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, essays and books including in the journals Science, Nature, and PNAS, and won more than $9M in research funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation. He has assisted the National Academy of Sciences with a major report on abrupt climate changes, NASA with a new satellite mission to monitor global water resources, and the World Economic Forum with issues of Arctic development.

He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and of the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, and his scientific research has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, and on NPR, CBC Radio, and BBC, among others.

His first book, The World in 2050, won the Walter P. Kistler Book Award and was a Nature Editor’s Pick of 2012. His new book Rivers of Power, about civilization and rivers, has be published in 2021.