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Dr. Alexander de Sherbinin

Pronouns: he / him / his

Director and Senior Research Scientist, Directorate, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia Climate School

Adjunct Professor, M.A. in Climate and Society

Columbia Climate School

Lecturer, M.S. in Sustainability Science

Manager, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
Lead, Global Knowledge Hub of the UN Global Centre for Climate Mobility and the Climate School

201 Geoscience
Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
61 Route 9W, PO Box 1000
Palisades, NY 10964

BIOGRAPHY:

Dr. de Sherbinin is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of global environmental change and geospatial data applications, integration, and dissemination. His research and teaching address climate-related mobility; climate vulnerability mapping; urban climate vulnerability; population dynamics and the environment; and composite environmental sustainability indicators. He has published 70 peer reviewed articles, 25 chapters in edited volumes, and authored or co-authored several books and major reports. He has managed projects under contract with NASA, the US Agency for International Development, The World Bank, UN Environment, UNDP’s Global Environmental facility, and multiple foundations. His personal web site has a full list of books, reports, and peer reviewed articles.

EARTH INSTITUTE LIVE VIDEOS

PROJECTS

Only select projects listed below
Name Start Date End Date
2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 3/1/17 1/31/18
Anticipatory Analytics for Environmental Stressors Phase 2 1/1/19 12/31/20
Climate Change, Human Mobility, and Securing Resilience-Impact of Climate Change on Population Distribution 1/4/17 2/28/18
Conference: At What Point Managed Retreat? 6/19/19 6/21/19
Environment under Review: Emerging Issues Project Globally 3/28/16 10/31/16
Establishment of the POPGRID Data Collaborative 9/1/17 6/30/20
Groundswell II: Climate Change Migration Analysis for the West Africa Coastal Areas Management Program and Ethiopia 10/1/18 3/31/21
Population and Infrastructure on Our Human Planet: Supporting Sustainable Development through Improved Spatial Data and Models for Human Settlements, Infrastructure, and Population Distribution Based on Earth Observations 1/2/18 6/30/22
Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) 1/1/01
SERVIR for USAID West Africa 4/7/16 8/30/21
Socioeconomic Data and Applications Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) for the EOS Data and Information System 8/1/18 7/31/22
Socioeconomic Data and Applications Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) for the EOS Data and Information System 8/1/13 7/31/18
USAID African and Latin American Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC) 10/25/11 3/27/15
Using NASA Earth Science Datasets for National Climate Assessment Indicators: Urban Impacts of Heat Waves Associated with Climate Change 10/11/13 7/25/15
West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change 6/1/15 9/30/20
Addressing Climate-Forced Displacement in Africa 11/9/20 10/1/21
At What Point Managed Retreat? Resilience, Relocation and Climate Justice Conference 6/22/21 6/25/21
Environmental Security in Mali: Improving livelihoods by addressing climate an water risks, land management and transhumance 4/8/21 3/7/22
2022 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 9/1/21 6/30/22
Preparation of a Report on Climate Migration in Kazakhstan 12/15/21 1/31/22
SERVIR West Africa Phase 2 6/15/23 3/14/27
Comparing Underlying Drivers of South-North Migration in Central America and West Africa 7/15/22 7/14/25
Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) For the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) 8/1/23 7/31/24
Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 5/1/23 6/30/24
Modeling Future Mobility for the Greater Caribbean Climate Mobility Initiative (GCCMI) 6/7/23 3/31/24
At What Point Managed Retreat?: Habitability and Mobility in an Era of Climate Change 6/20/23 6/23/23

17 PUBLICATIONS ON COLUMBIA | ACADEMIC COMMONS

Only select publications listed below
Name Published Date
A New Dataset Integrating Public Socioeconomic, Physical Risk, and Housing Data for Climate Justice Metrics: A Test-Case Study in Miami 2022
Migration Theory in Climate Mobility Research 2022
Open for Climate Justice: Conversations with Columbia Climate School Researchers 2022
Climate Mobility and Development Cooperation 2021
Curating Big Data on Population and Settlements to Monitor the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2021
The Critical Importance of Citizen Science Data 2021
A Systematic Review of Coastal Vulnerability Mapping 2020
Groundswell : Preparing for Internal Climate Migration 2018
Landsat-Derived Estimates of Mangrove Extents in the Sierra Leone Coastal Landscape Complex during 1990–2016 2018
Mapping the Future: Policy Applications of Climate Vulnerability Mapping in West Africa 2017
Temperature and humidity based projections of a rapid rise in global heat stress exposure during the 21st century 2017
Social vulnerability to floods in two coastal megacities: New York City and Mumbai 2016
Data Integration for Climate Vulnerability Mapping in West Africa 2015
Using satellite data to develop environmental indicators 2014
Climate change hotspots mapping: what have we learned? 2013
Migration and risk: net migration in marginal ecosystems and hazardous areas 2012
What is the role for conservation organizations in poverty alleviation in the world’s wild places? 2008

PUBLICATIONS

Publications since 2020

2024 

Tuholske, C., M.A. Di Landro, W. Anderson, R.J. van Duijne, and A. de Sherbinin. 2024. A Framework to Link Climate Change, Food Security, and Migration: Unpacking the Agricultural Pathway. Population & Environment. 46(8). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-024-00446-7

Fraisl, D., L. See, S. MacFeely, A. de Sherbinin, G. Carletto and F. Bras. (2024). Chapter 13. Citizen science for SDG delivery, data, and measurement. In: Tkalec, I. (ed). Elgar Companion to Data and Indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/book-series/environment/elgar-companions-to-the-sustainable-development-goals-series.html

2023

Van Der Geest, K., A. de Sherbinin, F. Gemenne, and K. Warner. 2023. Climate migration research and policy connections: progress since the Foresight Report. Frontiers in Climate, 5, 1231679. https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2023.1231679

Oakes, R., K. Van der Geest, B. Schraven, S. Adaawen, S. Ayeb-Karlsson, A. de Sherbinin, B. Etzold, J. Groth, K. Hermanns, S. Lakeman, R. Nawrotzki, C. Rademacher-Schulz, C. Romankiewic, D. Serraglio, H. Sterly, L. Thalheimer, C. Wiederkehr, and D. Williams. 2023. A future agenda for research on climate change and human mobility. International Migration.  14 August 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13169

Elias, P., A. Shonowo, A. de Sherbinin, C. Hultquist, F. Danielsen, C. Cooper, M. Mondardini, E. Faustman, A. Bowser, J.-B. Minster, M. van Deventer, I. Popescu. 2023. Mapping the Landscape of Citizen Science in Africa: Assessing its Potential Contributions to Sustainable Development Goals 6 and 11 on Access to Clean Water and Sanitation and Sustainable Cities. Citizen Science Theory and Practice. 8(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.601

Martinez, J. F., K. MacManus, E.C. Stokes, Z. Wang, and A. de Sherbinin. 2023. Suitability of NASA’s Black Marble Daily Nighttime Lights for Population Studies at Varying Spatial and Temporal Scales. Remote Sensing, 15(10), 2611. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15102611

Yang, Y., W. Bao, and A. de Sherbinin. 2023.  Mapping fine-resolution nested social-ecological system archetypes to reveal archetypical human-environmental interactions. Landscape and Urban Planning, 239, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104863

2022

de Sherbinin, A., K. Grace, S. McDermid, K. van der Geest, M. Puma, and A. Bell. 2022. Migration Theory in Climate Mobility Research.  Frontiers in Climate. 10 May 2022 https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2022.882343

Rosengaertner, S., A. de Sherbinin, and R. Stojanov. 2022. Supporting the agency of cities as climate migration destinations. International Migration. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14682435

Hultquist, C., A. de Sherbinin, A. Bowser and S. Schade. 2022. Editorial: Open Citizen Science Data and Methods. Frontiers in Climate. 23 June 2022  https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2022.943534

Wolf, M.J., D.C. Esty, H. Kim, M.L. Bell, S. Brigham, Q. Nortonsmith, S. Zaharieva, Z.A. Wendling, A. de Sherbinin, and J.W. Emerson. 2022. New Insights for Tracking Global and Local Trends in Exposure to Air Pollutants. Environmental Science & Technology, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c08080.

2021

de Sherbinin, A., A. Bowser, T.-R. Chuang, C. Cooper, F. Danielsen, R. Edmunds, P. Elias, E. Faustman, C. Hultquist, R. Mondardini, I. Popescu, A. Shonowo, K. Sivakumar. 2021. The Critical Importance of Citizen Science Data. Frontiers in Climate. https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.650760

Horton, R., A. de Sherbinin, D. Wrathall, and M. Oppenheimer. 2021. Assessing human habitability and migration. Science, 372(6548), 1279-1283. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abi8603 

Stojanov, R., S. Rosengaertner, A. de Sherbinin, and R. Nawrotzki. 2021. Climate Mobility and Development Cooperation. Population and Environment. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-021-00387-5

Kruczkiewicz, A., A. Bucherie, F. Ayala, C. Hultquist, H. Vergara, S. Mason, J. Bazo, and A. de Sherbinin. 2021. "Development of a Flash Flood Confidence Index from Disaster Reports and Geophysical Susceptibility" Remote Sensing 13, no. 14: 2764. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13142764 

Tedesco, M., C.G. Hultquist, and A. de Sherbinin. 2021. A New Dataset Integrating Public Socioeconomic, Physical Risk, and Housing Data for Climate Justice Metrics: A Test-Case Study in Miami. Environmental Justice. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0059

Tuholske, C., A.E. Gaughan, A. Sorichetta, A. de Sherbinin, A. Bucherie, C. Hultquist, F. Stevens, A. Kruczkiewicz, C. Huyck, and G. Yetman. 2021. Implications for Tracking SDG Indicator Metrics with Gridded Population Data, Sustainability, 13(13): 7329. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137329

Anderson, W., C. Taylor, S. McDermid, E. Ilboudo-Nébié, R. Seager, W. Schlenker, F. Cottier, A. de Sherbinin, D. Mendeloff, and K. Markey. 2021. Violent conflict exacerbated drought-related food insecurity between 2009 and 2019 in sub-Saharan Africa. Nature Food, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00327-4

Stavi, I., J.R. de Pinho, A.K. Paschalidou, S.B. Adamo, K.Galvin, A. de Sherbinin, T. Even, C. Heaviside, and K. van der Geest. 2021. Food security among dryland pastoralists and agropastoralists: The climate, land-use change, and population dynamics nexus. The Anthropocene Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196211007512

2020

de Sherbinin, A. 2020. Climate Impacts as Drivers of Migration. Migration Information Source. Journal of the Migration Policy Institute, 23 October 2020. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/climate-impacts-drivers-migration. 

de Sherbinin, A., and S. Kienberger (eds). 2020. Special Issue "Climate Risk and Vulnerability Mapping", Sustainability. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/Climate_Risk_Mapping

Skirbekk, V., A. de Sherbinin, S. Adamo, Tricia Chai-Onn, and P. Navarro. 2020. Religious affiliation and environmental challenges in the 21st century. Journal of Religion and Demography. 7: 238–271. https://doi.org/10.1163/2589742X-12347110

Bowser, A., C. Cooper, A. de Sherbinin, A. Wiggins, et al. 2020. Still In Need of Norms: The State of the Data in Citizen Science. Citizen Science Theory and Practice. 5(1), 18. http://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.303

Tellman, B., C. Schank, B. Schwarz,, P.D. Howe and A. de Sherbinin. 2020. Using Disaster Outcomes to Validate Components of Social Vulnerability to Floods: Flood Deaths and Property Damage across the USA. Sustainability. 12(15). https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156006  

Bukvic, A., A. Apotsos, G. Rohat, and A. de Sherbinin. 2020. Coastal vulnerability assessment and mapping: A systematic review. Sustainability, 12(7), 2822. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072822

Yan, Y., A. de Sherbinin, and Y. Liu. 2020. China's poverty alleviation resettlement: Progress, problems and solutions. Habitat International, 98, 102135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2020.102135

CONTACT

adesherbinin@ciesin.columbia.edu

845-365-8936

NETWORK AFFILIATION(S)

Climate Mobility Network Decarbonization, Climate Resilience and Climate Justice Network Foundations for the Social Climate Earth Network

EXPERTISE

geography socioeconomics demography climate

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, Dec. 2014, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands.

M.A. Geography, May 1989, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.

B.A. Geography, June 1984, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.