New Research on Population and Environment

Summary: With support from NICHD and the Hewlett Foundation, the National Research Council’s Com-mittee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change (CHDGC), with assistance from the Com-mittee on Population, has organized a study panel that will hold a workshop on emerging re-search on relationships of human population change and environmental change. The workshop will focus on a part of the research field where significant activity is ongoing and where working collaborations exist between social scientists and natural scientists: research on effects of hu-man population changes on environmental outcomes that are mediated by changes in land use. The study panel is organizing the workshop to be held in January 2004. It will produce a volume including papers from the workshop that illustrate current promising research on the topic and the ways that researchers have addressed the scientific challenges arising for the need to inte-grate methods and approaches from the social and biological sciences. If sufficient additional support can be found, the study panel will hold a second meeting and produce a brief consensus statement, on promising future directions for the field.