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Department of

Earth & Environmental Sciences

Linderman Library Rotunda stained glass dome
Benjamin Felzer, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Lehigh University

Benjamin Felzer

Associate Professor

610.758.3536
bsf208@lehigh.edu
224 STEPS
Education:

Doctor of Philosophy in Geological Sciences, May, 1995 from Brown University

Masters of Science in Geology, December 1991 from University of Colorado

Bachelor of Arts in Physics, May 1987 from Swarthmore College, minor in Astronomy

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Research Areas

Additional Interests

  • Terrestrial Ecosystems
  • Biogeochemical Modeling
  • Carbon Cycle

Research Statement

My research focuses on the terrestrial carbon sink, and how the effects of land use and land cover change (LULCC), rising CO2 levels, climate change, and air quality like ozone and nitrogen deposition, affect the ability of the land to take up carbon and the associated ecosystem services.  About a third of the CO2 emitted to the atmosphere gets taken up by vegetation on the land, in which there is a net sink of photosynthesis over respiration.  However, the effects of LULCC are an additional source of CO2 to the atmosphere.  I have been developing a version of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Model (TEM) to understand these effects at the continental (conterminous U.S.) and global scale.  Two recent papers (Felzer, 2023 and Felzer 2024) explore the effects of land-use legacy on the future terrestrial carbon sink, both with respect to continued current LULCC and future scenarios of LULCC under future emission scenarios.

Recent research with one of my graduate students focused on developing a biogeography module for TEM to explore the persistence of forests in the American West and the potential of transitioning to shrubland or grassland due to climate warming, increased drought, and wildfires by the end of the century (Kodero et al. 2024).  Research with another student used the model to assess land-use change in the Lehigh Valley relative to the Bethlehem Climate Action Plan (CAP) with a focus on benefits to lower income communities (Andrade and Felzer 2021).  I also have an ongoing air quality project with undergraduates to use PurpleAir monitors to measure PM2.5 in the Bethlehem area and relate bad air quality events to meteorology and traffic patterns.

I am now working with colleague Erwan Monier (UC Davis) on global simulations with a new version of TEM (GDSTEM – Global Dynamical Structural TEM) to contribute to the annual publication of the carbon budget as part of the Trends in the Land Carbon Cycle (TRENDY) model intercomparison project.  These models are used to determine the magnitude of the terrestrial carbon sink annually and the uncertainty in the estimates of the emissions due to LULCC.  We are also validating the model to a set of global observations using the International Land Model Benchmarking (ILAMB) protocol.

Biography

Benjamin Felzer is a climate and biogeochemical modeler who studies terrestrial ecosystems. He received his B.A. in physics and astronomy from Swarthmore College in 1987, his M.S. in geology from the University of Colorado – Boulder in 1991, his Ph.D. in geology from Brown University in 1995, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder.  Following his postdoctoral research, he worked as a Project Scientist for the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, spent the next year as an assistant project manager for the hydrological component of NOAA’s Office of Global Programs (OGP), and in 2001 became a research associate at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.  He spent the spring of 2008 as a Visiting Professor of Geology at Oberlin College, and started his current position as an Assistant Professor in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lehigh in August, 2008, becoming an Associate Professor in 2015.  His recent work involves modeling the carbon and ecosystem effects of human and natural disturbances, such as land use and land cover change, in the context of climate warming, rising CO2 levels, and air pollution.  He has also looked at how climate extremes affect ecosystem function and human societies.  He recently became a member of the leadership team of the new Lehigh Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience (started in 2024).

Recent Publications

Felzer, B.S., Ember, C.R., Chiang, R., and Jiang, M. 2020. The relationships of extreme precipitation and temperature events with ethnographic reports of droughts and floods in nonindustrial societies. Weather, Climate, and Society, 12: 135-148, DOI: 10.1175/WCAS-D-19-0045.1.

Zhang, J. Felzer, B.S., and Troy, T.J. 2020. Projected changes of carbon balance in mesic grassland ecosystems in response to warming and elevated CO2 using CMIP5 GCM results in the Central Great Plains, USA. Ecological Modeling. 434: 109247. 

Ember, C.R., Skoggard, I., Felzer, B., Pitek, E., and Jiang, M. 2021. Climate variability, drought, and the belief that high gods are associated with weather in nonindustrial societies. Weather, Climate, and Society. doi.10.1175/WCAS-D-20-0080.1.

Felzer, B.S. 2023. Effect of land use legacy on the future carbon sink for the conterminous U.S. Biogeosciences, doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-573-2023.

Kodero, J., Felzer, B.S., Shi, Y. 2024. Future transition from forests to shrublands and grasslands in the western United States is expected to reduce carbon storage. Communications Earth & Environment. 5(78). doi.10.1038/s43247-024-01253-6.

Felzer, B.S. and Andrade, C. 2024. Future (2020-2099) carbon and water dynamics of Lehigh Valley based on land use and land cover change. Environments. 11(133). doi.org/10.3390/environments11070133.

Felzer, B.S. 2024. Modeling the future carbon sink: Land-use and climate change may offset CO2 fertilization in the United States. Plants People Planet. doi.10.1002/ppp3.10582. 

Recent Abstracts

Felzer, B., 2021. “Effect of land-use legacy on the future carbon sink for the conterminous U.S.”, Fall AGU meeting, New Orleans, LA. December 16, 2021, talk.

Andrade, C. and Felzer, B. 2021. “Role of Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Carbon Storage in the Lehigh Valley”. Fall AGU meeting. New Orleans, LA. December 15, 2021.

Sahagian, D., Bodzin, A., Brunstein, L., Chou, S., Felzer, B., Friedman, S., Jellison, K., McAndrew, T., Ramage, J., Pooley, K., and Worth, A. “COVID-19 and the exacerbated impacts of air pollution and social inequities on public health: a case study of the Lehigh Valley”. Fall AGU meeting. New Orleans, LA. December 14, 2021.

Felzer, B. Effect of land-use legacy on the future carbon sink for the conterminous U.S.  2022. Fall AGU meeting. Chicago, IL. December 15, 2022, poster.

Kodero, J.M.  and Felzer, B. 2022. Vegetation shifts from forest to shrubland or grassland in the Western U.S. due to warming, drought, and fire. Fall AGU meeting. Chicago, IL. December 15, 2022.

Felzer, B. Effect of land use and land cover change and CO2 fertilization on the future carbon sink for the conterminous U.S. Anthromes, CO2, and terrestrial carbon workshop, Potomac MD, 3/27-3/30, 2023.

Felzer, B. Effect of SSP370 and SSP245 on the future carbon sink for the conterminous U.S; Fall AGU meeting, San Francisco, CA. December 14, 2023.

Lu, Y, Rauschenbach, S., Felzer, B., and Monier, E. Uncertainty in the 21st-century global terrestrial carbon cycle driven by future climate change and land-use change. December 9, 2024.

Felzer, B. Monier, E., Lu, Y., and Rauschenbach, S. Evaluating historical carbon dynamics of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model with TRENDY forcing using the ILAMB protocol; Fall AGU meeting, Washington D.C. December 9, 2024.

Recent Invited Presentations

  • Lehigh Valley Watershed Conference. “Lehigh Valley Extreme Precipitation and Flooding“, March 14, 2023, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.
  • Felzer, B. “Climate Change Futures” Guest speaker Josh Pepper and Amanda Greene’s Freshman Seminar, 4/8/23.
  • Lower MacCungie Library, Talk on Climate Change, 6/7/2023.
  • Penn State, Department of Meteorology. Comparing future scenarios of carbon emissions/land use and land cover change on the carbon sink for the conterminous U.S.  9/20/2023.
  • Felzer, B. “Terrestrial Carbon Cycle”, Guest speaker Ed Whitley’s Freshman Seminar, 10/5/2023.
  • Felzer, B. “Myths and Facts Behind Climate Change”, Guest speaker Anders Knospe Freshman Seminar, 11/9/2023.
  • Introduced faculty members of Climate and Hazard Modeling group at the Planning Meeting for the Climate, Equity, and Resilience in Catastrophe Modeling (CERCaT) Industry-University Cooperative Research Center, Lehigh University, Oct. 17-18, 2024.
  • Barrack Hebrew Academy, Environmental Science Conference, Feb. 27, 2025, guest speaker on climate change in two Upper School and one Middle School sessions.

Teaching

  • Science of Environmental Issues (EES004): co-taught
  • Weather and Climate: Past, Present, and Future (EES023)
  • From Ice Age to Greenhouse Earth (EES090) replaced by How Hot Is Too Hot? (EES090)
  • Climate and Earth System Modeling (EES395)
  • Practice of Science (EES380)
  • Supervised Internship in Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES293)