IESD research combines elements from many traditional disciplines to build a better unified understanding of the Human-Earth system.

Earth System Economics.

Natural and social sciences are typically pursued independently of each other, using different tools. The IESD is constructing a novel approach, coined “Earth System Economics”, to seamlessly integrate the global human system with the other components of the Earth System.

The Human Chronome Project.

All humans spend 24 hours per day engaged in activities. Those activities determine how we alter the biophysical reality, and play into our subjective experiences. The Human Chronome Project aims to build a comprehensive global dataset of human activities in order to better understand this critical aspect of the global human system.

Predictability of Subjective Wellbeing.

One way to find out how someone’s life is going is simply to ask them. The answers people give to such questions have revealed many factors that contribute to life satisfaction, both material and societal. By using co-ordinated global survey data we seek to provide fundamental insight on what matters most to humans.

Surface Earth System Analysis and Modeling Environment (SESAME).

Data on human and non-human systems are typically archived in very different ways, in different places. The SESAME project aims to bring key human-Earth datasets into the same, spatially-gridded format to accelerate discovery and aid modeling efforts.

Life Across Scales.

The diversity of life on Earth can be overwhelming. But the rapid expansion of large datasets is now helping to identify general patterns within life, from individual cells to organisms. We are studying general processes of growth, energetics, and abundance within living systems to better grasp underlying functions and link them to human disturbances.