Neilson member of Nobel Prize-winning panel of ...( PORTLAND Ore. October 17 2007. -- It...)

PORTLAND, Ore., October 17, 2007. -- It all started as a graduate school thesis project.

Ive always had a burning desire to figure out why things live where they do, says bioclimatologist Ron Neilson. Why do species live in different places? Ive been studying the distribution of vegetation species for more than 30 years. So I even made this question the basis of my masters and doctorate theses back in the mid-1970s.

That burning desire led Neilson to develop the Mapped Atmosphere-Plant-Soil System (MAPSS) model. Over the years he expanded the use of it from a regional system to a global one. So global, that he became one of hundreds of scientists worldwide, who shared in the Nobel Peace Prize for contributing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which issued landmark studies on global warming.

The prize will be split between the scientists, and former Vice President Al Gore, who helped explain scientists findings on climate change to a lay audience through his book and 2006 documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth.

In one particular project Neilson and his colleagues, members of IPCC, provided the world with 14 future ecological scenarios. Neilson first contributed to the 1995 assessment, but was a lead author on the panels 1998 Special Report on the Regional Impacts of Climate Change, and has remained a continuing contributor. Many of the concepts used to develop the MAPSS models were gained in the 1970s while studying the distribution of two species of oak in six Western States, long before climate change was really an issue.

Before joining the Station, Neilson was recruited by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1987, to help build the first national assessment on climate change and to help design a national plan for research. He completed the projects in 1989, and in 1992 joined the PNW Research Stations global change research program.

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