The University of Wisconsin—Madison, home of pioneering ecologists who studied lakes, forests, wetlands and prairies, is playing a key role in the next wave of ecological research: large teams of scientists confronting the dilemma of a changing climate on a shrinking planet. 

Jack Williams has been honored with a Romnes Faculty Fellowship. The Romnes award recognizes exceptional faculty members who have earned tenure within the last six years. The winners receive an unrestricted $50,000 award for research, supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). The award is named for the late H.I. Romnes, former president of the WARF Board of Trustees.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, including many affiliated with the Nelson Institute, contributed to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment released by the White House on May 6.

Samuel Munoz and Jack Williams were featured in an news story and paper regarding the mysterious abandonment of one of North America's first big cities that may be linked to a massive Mississippi River flood 1,800 years ago.

Climate Quest is a competition that will award significant grant opportunities to teams with practical, high-impact solutions to mitigate or adapt to climate change. Climate Quest is led by the UW–Madison Office of Sustainability in partnership with the Global Health Institute, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and Wisconsin Energy Institute.

The Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research held its fourth annual Reid Bryson Scholarship competition on April 22, 2014, as part of the Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference. There were 28 student applicants from a diverse set of departments and centers across campus. The winner of the 2014 Reid Bryson Graduate Scholarship of $1,000 was Vijay Limaye for his presentation, "Climate change impacts on air quality and human health in the eastern U.S.” The winners of the 2014 Reid Bryson Undergraduate Scholarships were Marian Mateling and Sonia Petty. Marian’s research was on "Assessing cloud and sea ice effects on the Arctic radiation budget in the CMIP5 models,” and Sonia presented on "Effects of climate change and land cover on the subnivium, a seasonal refuge beneath the snow.”

At the Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference on April 22, 2014, there was a session held on "Climate Change Impacts in the Great Lakes Region".  The session explored the observed and potential impacts of climate change on the region's forests, wildlife, winters, and the Great Lakes themselves.  It was moderated by Professor Dan Vimont, with presentations and a panel discussion by Dr. Val Bennington, Dr. Michael Notaro, Dr. Ben Zuckerberg, and Dr. Chris Swanston.  Wisconsin Public Radio covered the session through a report on ice and lake level projections for the Great Lakes Basin, interviewing Drs. Bennington and Notaro.

Michael Mann, creator of the well-known "hockey stick" graph depicting a sharp recent increase in our planet's temperature, will deliver the fifth annual Len Robock Lecture on Thursday, April 17 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Feng He was interviewed for a news story for Nelson Institute on how early agriculture drove pre-industrial climate change, published in a recent article in Geophysical Research Letters with Steve Vavrus, John Kutzbach and co-authors.