On Wednesday, October 4, the MacArthur Foundation announced twenty 2023 MacArthur Fellows, often known as recipients of the “genius grant.” Among them is Lucy Hutyra of Boston University, who is an environmental ecologist funded by the Climate Program Office’s Atmospheric Chemistry, Carbon Cycle and Climate (AC4) Program. As recognition for her exceptional work investigating impacts of urbanization on environmental carbon cycle dynamics, she will receive a no-strings-attached prize of $800,000. The announcement describes Hutyra’s work while funded by AC4, focused on how carbon moves between reservoirs like plants, trees, and soil, especially in urban environments. This work has led to an important discovery of an “edge effect,” where trees on the edges of forests take up more carbon than those inside the forest. Hutyra will continue to use these research findings to inform natural resource management in urban settings, and to advance climate mitigation efforts.
For more information, contact Clara Deck.
