Diana Liverman, University of Arizona geology professor and director of Latin American studies, has been awarded part of a $1.6 million grant to study the human dimensions of global change.

Pennsylvania State University is the primary recipient of the $1.6 million grant, which Liverman wrote while teaching there. The UA and Penn State are collaborating on the five-year project.

Global change is an emerging research area that focuses mainly on climate and water use, and deforestation and land use, Liverman said.

The changes are about 80 percent due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and 20 percent due to tropical deforestation.

Scientists have been studying these problems for years, but the integration of social science and public policy into the outcome is the new and exciting part of the National Science Foundation grant, Liverman said.

The NSF awarded over $17 million to the UA, along with three other universities, to "combine research in the natural and social sciences ... to discover ways to better predict the impact of changes on populations and their environments," according to an NSF press release.

"People hear about lots of money being spent on research - they want to know how the results affect them," she said.

Liverman's research will answer that question by "developing methods to localize the social causes and consequences of global change."

She will focus on the United States-Mexico border region because it is a good example of a desert climate and brings international cooperation into the project.

The work consists of understanding the perceptions and reactions of people in the affected areas and developing computer models to predict droughts and other catastrophic events in hopes of developing better coping strategies, Liverman said.

Field work has already been done by a team of students in Latin American studies who went to Sonora, Mexico and interviewed farmers during the drought earlier this year.

The results of those interviews and the preliminary computer models on precipitation and crop yields suggest that if Mexican farmers had access to water and fertilizer, they could adapt to the climate changes. Unfortunately, the Mexican economy denies them that access, she said.

Solutions to water shortages and poor land use can target the causes, such as toxic emissions by industry, or focus on methods of adaptation, which is the option the UA is studying.

Adaptation to water shortages can include ideas like the Central Arizona Project, water conservation or migration of farm workers during dry spells.

Another adaptation is illustrated by the work being done by UA Regents economics professor Vernon Smith on water marketing - another of the branches of this human dimensions grant.

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