mathematical task we can’t yet do very well. The problem is exacerbated by the
possibility that climate change could cause our forest ecosystems to be replaced
by more tropical ones or that it might expose our forests to new invasive species
like the mountain pine beetle. Understanding the mechanisms of changing forest
health and how to prevent unhealthy forest evolution presents challenges for
many disciplines, with mathematics heavily involved with each one.
Similarly, transforming our energy infrastructure will require themathematical tools to design a more robust power grid, mathematically guided
improvements in materials science to build better batteries, and better incentive
schemes to make cap-and-trade solutions effectively reduce carbon emissions.
And planning how to respond to the heat waves, tsunamis, hurricanes, and
floods that some models predict will be unleashed by climate change requires
new, mathematically-guided strategies for evacuations, for hospital triage, and for
supply transportation, as well as new approaches to mitigate the effects of these
natural disasters.
Meeting these mathematical and statistical challenges is going to requiremore mathematical scientists to get involved, new ways for mathematical
scientists to interact with other disciplines, and greater levels of funding for
mathematical work in sustainability. This report is designed to lay out the
mathematical challenges that face us in sustainability science. The field is so
broad that this report can’t possibly describe every challenge, but it provides a
number of representative examples that show the range of work that remains to
be done. The Appendices present white papers written by participants in the
workshop and go into more detail at a somewhat more technical level. However,
even these white papers provide only a sampling of the challenges that face us.
The mathematical and statistical scientists at the Mathematical Challengesfor Sustainability Workshop at Rutgers were divided into groups to brainstorm
about the mathematical sciences challenges in five different areas. The first,
Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment, focused on the interrelationship
between human needs and ecological needs. We depend on being able to use
the resources of the natural environment. One way of doing so sustainably is to
use resources no more quickly than nature can regenerate them. Another way,
which can also be sustainable, is to deplete natural stocks and to convert them
into another form of capital (manufactured, human, or social) at a rate that is
capable of maintaining human well-being over the long term. This group laid out