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Karen Seto

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Karen Seto
Karen Seto speaking at the Urban Age conference in 2015
Born
Hong Kong
Born
Karen Ching-Yee Seto
Alma materUniversity of California, Santa Barbara (BA)
Boston University (MA, PhD)
AwardsMember of the Council on Foreign Relations (2023)
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022)
Member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (2018)
Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2017)
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2017)
NSF CAREER award (2004)
NASA New Investigator Program in Earth Science Award (2000)
Scientific career
InstitutionsStanford University
Yale University
Doctoral advisorRobert K. Kaufmann
Curtis E. Woodcock[1]
Websiteenvironment.yale.edu/profile/seto
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese司徒靜儀[2]
JyutpingSi1tou4 Zing6ji4

Karen Ching-Yee Seto is a geographer, urbanisation and land change scientist, and Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanisation Science at Yale University. She is an expert on urbanisation and sustainability, and satellite remote sensing. She was the co-lead for the chapter on urban mitigation in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report and IPCC 5th Assessment Report. From 2014 to 2020, she was the co-editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Global Environmental Change. She is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Early life and education

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Seto was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the U.S. as a child.[3] She attended Pomona Catholic High School and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where she earned her bachelor's degree in political science.[1][4] She went to Boston University for a joint master's degree in international relations, and resource and environmental management, followed by a doctorate in geography, where she worked with Robert C. Kaufmann and Curtis E. Woodcock.[1] Her dissertation research studied urban land expansion and impacts on farmland in the Pearl River Delta of China.[5][6] She was a pioneer in combining socioeconomic data and satellite imagery to study urban growth using time series analysis. She found that in the years between 1988 and 1996, urbanisation increased by over 300%, with the majority being converted from agricultural land.[6][7]

Career and research

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Seto was awarded a NASA New Investigator Program in Earth Science Award in 2000 and an National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2004.[8][9] She was appointed a faculty member at Stanford University in 2000, where she held joint appointments at the Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment.[10] Seto conducts research on the human transformation of land, understanding the processes of urbanisation and exploring the environmental impact of changes in land-use. Her early work considered the relationship between economic development, urbanisation and land use in China and Vietnam.[9] She uses satellite remote sensing and field interviews as a means to document land use and spatial structure. She led the Ecosystem Management Tools for the Commission on Ecosystem Management of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) from 2002 to 2008 and co-chaired the International Project on Urbanisation and Global Environmental Change from 2005 to 2016.[11] In 2008, Seto joined the faculty of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. In 2013, she was the first woman of color and the first Asian woman to be tenured at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (now Yale School of the Environment).

Seto was appointed Associate Dean for Research and Director of Doctoral Studies at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 2014 and the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanisation Science in 2017.[12][4] She has been a coordinating lead author for two UN climate reports. She co-led the urban mitigation chapter of the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report (AR6) and the 2014 IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5), which explored options to mitigate for greenhouse gases in urban areas.[13] After an earthquake devastated areas in Nepal in 2015, Seto was inspired to investigate how the evolving urban developments were affecting vulnerability to hazards in the region.[14] She led a NASA project that looks at the links between urban growth, vulnerability and natural disasters.[15] She has studied the "hidden linkages" between urbanisation and food systems.[16][17] Seto identified that the growth of urban areas worldwide could eliminate significant areas of agricultural lands, predicting that by 2030 an area the size of New Jersey could be lost.[18][19] Seto has used satellite imagery and census data to explore urbanisation in India.[20] She has used a range of satellite imagery to study urbanisation, including from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) nighttime lights imagery, Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and Landsat.[20]

Seto edited a collection of papers for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) on urbanisation and sustainability, investigating the impact of large-scale urbanisation.[21][22] In the special edition of PNAS, Seto identified three themes; the sustainability of urbanisation is multi-dimensional, and solutions that are designed for one dimension (public health, biodiversity) may not have a positive impact, urbanisation may be difficult to observe and that there is a pressing need to develop quantitative methods to evaluate social and ecological processes.[22] Seto has called for an integrated approach for global sustainability as opposed to isolated activities.[23] For example, she demonstrated that proper urban planning and effective transport policy could reduce energy use by 25% in cities around the world.[24][25] This could include more "compact" development and increased energy efficient technology.[26] She found that cities in the developing world resulted in 86% of the energy reduction, because they have potential to design strategies to promote short commutes.[24] Together with Yale colleague Eli Fenichel, Seto was awarded a Resources for the Future Award in 2018 to estimate the value of satellite data products to measure and map urbanisation in the Himalaya.[14]

She has held visiting professor positions at National Taipei University and the University of Copenhagen. She was the executive producer of the documentary film 10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China,[27] which uses a variety of image sources to document rapid urban growth in China.[4]

Books and films

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  • City Unseen: New Visions of an Urban Planet[28]
  • Handbook on Urbanisation and Global Environmental Change[29]
  • 10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China (documentary film)[27]

Awards and honours

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Awards and honours Seto has received include:

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Karen C. Seto | Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies". environment.yale.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  2. ^ "Workshop on Urban Climate: From Science to Solutions". Beijing: Yale Center. 2015-10-20. Retrieved 2021-03-07.
  3. ^ Key thinkers on cities. Koch, Regan,, Latham, Alan. London. 2017-08-09. ISBN 9781473907744. OCLC 985695509.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. ^ a b c "Karen Seto appointed the Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science". news.yale.edu. Yale News. May 15, 2017. Archived from the original on May 11, 2019. Retrieved May 11, 2019.
  5. ^ Woodcock, Curtis E.; Kaufmann, Robert K.; Seto, Karen C. (2000). "Landsat reveals China's farmland reserves, but they're vanishing fast". Nature. 406 (6792): 121. doi:10.1038/35018267. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 10910328. S2CID 205007651. Closed access icon
  6. ^ a b Seto, Karen C.; Kaufmann, Robert K.; Woodcock, Curtis E. (2002), Walsh, Stephen J.; Crews-Meyer, Kelley A. (eds.), "Monitoring Land Use Change in the Pearl River Delta, China", Linking People, Place, and Policy: A GIScience Approach, Springer US, pp. 69–90, doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-0985-1_4, ISBN 9781461509851
  7. ^ Seto, Karen C.; Kaufmann, Robert K.; Woodcock, Curtis E. (2002). "Monitoring Land Use Change in the Pearl River Delta, China". Linking People, Place, and Policy. pp. 69–90. doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-0985-1_4. ISBN 978-1-4613-5337-9.
  8. ^ Council, National Research; Studies, Division on Earth and Life; Resources, Board on Earth Sciences and; Committee, Geographical Sciences; Sensing, Committee on the Earth System Science for Decisions About Human Welfare: Contributions of Remote (2007-01-13). Contributions of Land Remote Sensing for Decisions About Food Security and Human Health: Workshop Report. National Academies Press. ISBN 9780309102957.
  9. ^ a b "NSF Award Search: Award#0348986 - CAREER: Urban Land-Use Change in Asia". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  10. ^ "Karen C. Seto | World Resources Institute". www.wri.org. 2017-10-24. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  11. ^ "Karen Seto". ugec.org. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  12. ^ "Karen Seto Succeeds David Skelly as Associate Dean & Doctoral Studies Director". environment.yale.edu. 6 June 2014. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  13. ^ "Seto Leads Focus on Urbanization In the Latest IPCC Climate Report". environment.yale.edu. 14 April 2014. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  14. ^ a b "RFF Awards Yale Collaboration Examining the 'Value' of Remote Sensing in Himalaya". environment.yale.edu. 25 July 2018. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  15. ^ "Himalaya Study Eyes How Urban Shifts Affect Land Uses and Natural Disasters". environment.yale.edu. 17 January 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  16. ^ "Untangling the Hidden Linkages Between Urbanization and Food Systems". environment.yale.edu. 19 May 2016. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  17. ^ Ramankutty, Navin; Seto, Karen C. (2016-05-20). "Hidden linkages between urbanization and food systems". Science. 352 (6288): 943–945. Bibcode:2016Sci...352..943S. doi:10.1126/science.aaf7439. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 27199419. S2CID 206649618.
  18. ^ "Growth of Mega-Cities Will Consume Swaths of Cropland in Africa and Asia". environment.yale.edu. 3 January 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  19. ^ "Growth of Cities Poses Significant Global Environmental Risks". environment.yale.edu. 22 August 2011. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  20. ^ a b "User Profile: Dr. Karen Seto | Earthdata". earthdata.nasa.gov. 9 June 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  21. ^ "Can Science Keep Up with Growth of The World's 'Mega-Urban' Areas?". environment.yale.edu. 25 October 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  22. ^ a b Turner, B. L.; Alberti, Marina; Golden, Jay S.; Seto, Karen C. (2017). "Sustainability in an urbanizing planet". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (34): 8935–8938. Bibcode:2017PNAS..114.8935S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1606037114. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5576777. PMID 28784798.
  23. ^ a b c "Major Science Organizations Honor Seto For Work on Urban Land Systems". environment.yale.edu. 12 April 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  24. ^ a b "Smart Urbanization Could Reduce Energy Use in Cities 25 Percent by 2050". environment.yale.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  25. ^ "How cities would need 25 percent less energy". www.mcc-berlin.net. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  26. ^ "In Meeting Future Energy Demands, Density is as Important as Efficiency". environment.yale.edu. 11 January 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  27. ^ a b Seto, Karen (2006). 10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urbanization in China.
  28. ^ Seto, Karen C.; Reba, Meredith (2018). City Unseen: New Visions of an Urban Planet. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300221695.
  29. ^ Seto, K.C.; Solecki, W.D.; Griffith, C.A. (2015). Handbook on urbanization and global environmental change. Routledge. ISBN 9780415732260.
  30. ^ "Bohannan selected as Leopold Leadership Fellow | Environmental Studies Program". Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  31. ^ "Karen Seto". nasonline.org. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  32. ^ "Seto Elected to the Prestigious National Academy of Sciences". environment.yale.edu. 2 May 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  33. ^ "Raymond and Seto Elected AAAS Fellows". environment.yale.edu. 27 November 2017. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  34. ^ "Burke, Seto Elected to Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering". environment.yale.edu. 2 March 2018. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  35. ^ "Three F&ES Faculty Make 'Highly Cited Researchers' List". environment.yale.edu. 4 December 2018. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  36. ^ "Seto Receives National Honor for Outstanding Contributions to Remote Sensing Research". environment.yale.edu. 24 April 2019. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  37. ^ "Five YSE Faculty Members Make 'Highly Cited Researchers' List". 16 December 2020.
  38. ^ "Four YSE Faculty Members Named on the 'Highly Cited Researchers' List". 6 December 2021.
  39. ^ "'Highly Cited Researchers' List Includes Four YSE Faculty Members". Yale School of the Environment. 2022-11-16. Retrieved 2022-12-21.
  40. ^ "Eight Yale faculty members elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences". 28 April 2022.
  41. ^ The American Geographical Society Awards Alexander and Isle Melamid Medal
  42. ^ "World-renowned Urbanization Expert Karen Seto Elected to the Council on Foreign Relations". 7 March 2023.
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