EOAS&CNCC Joint Seminar - Impacts of Land Use, Agricultural and Food System Changes on Air Quality and Climate: Insights from Computational Earth System Modeling
Human appropriation of land resources via agriculture and forestry significantly shapes atmospheric chemistry and climate, with important ramifications for pressing sustainability issues such as air pollution, climate change, food insecurity and forest degradation. In this talk, we will examine a few examples of how such activities may have led to unexpected human health, ecological and climate consequences via Earth system connections. Integrating long-term datasets with high-performance computation of the Earth systems and machine learning, we will show how land use change (e.g., deforestation) and rising food demands may worsen ozone pollution and damage human health and forest carbon uptake, while enhancing the deposition of nitrogen and nutrients onto terrestrial ecosystems. We will also show how dietary changes in the Chinese population, mainly in the form of higher meat consumption, might have enhanced agricultural nitrogen emissions and worsened particulate matter pollution in China, thus leading to more premature deaths and health inequity. We will further discuss how more sustainable dietary options, agricultural and forest management may help alleviate some of these pressing global environmental problems.
Prof. Amos P. K. Tai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Amos obtained his B.Sc. from MIT, Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Harvard University, and was a Croucher Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT before he joined CUHK in 2013. Amos specializes in atmospheric chemistry and physics, ecological climatology, and sustainable agriculture and forestry. His research combines Earth system modeling and big-data analytics to address pressing sustainability issues concerning air pollution, climate change, sustainable forestry and agriculture. His work has been published in top-ranking journals including Nature Climate Change and Nature Food, and earned him the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Research Award for Young Scientists, Early Career Award from the Research Grants Council, Science Faculty Young Researcher Award, and founding membership of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences. Amos is also a passionate educator, having received the CUHK Vice-Chancellor Exemplary Teaching Award and Faculty of Science Exemplary Teaching Awards, and concurrently serving as the Associate Director of the Office of University General Education at CUHK. Amos delights in promoting science, environmental and sustainability education for the general public, regularly giving talks in schools and public avenues, participating in many TV and radio programs, and providing consulting services to various government departments and NGOs. He currently serves as a board member in Friends of the Earth (HK) and Cedar Foundation. For his professional contributions and public services to society, he was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of Hong Kong in 2024.
Monica ZHONG <monicamz@hkust-gz.edu.cn>