Kate A. Brauman is an American scientist who uses an interdisciplinary tool set to examine the interactions between land use change and water resources. Brauman is the lead scientist for the Global Water Initiative at

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

Institute on the Environment An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

Early life and education

Brauman, daughter of two chemists (

John I. Brauman John Isaiah Brauman (born September 7, 1937) is an American chemist. Biography John Brauman was born in Pittsburgh on September 7, 1937. Brauman graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1955. He obtained a bachelor's degree in 1959 from M ...

and Sharon K Brauman), grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and had mixed feelings about being a scientist. She notes that it was her undergraduate mentor, Robert Pollack who helped her see the connections between her desire to be creative and affect things that people care about, with science. Brauman graduated ''

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'' with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in Science and Religion from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 2000. After college she worked at the Natural Resources Defense Council from 2001 to 2004 where she was the Membership and Public Education Senior Associate. She credits her time at the NRDC for making her realize that the environment, in particular water and energy, are areas that people care deeply about; plus questions around water and energy need to be approached from multiple angles: biophysical, economic, and social, to find real-world solutions. After her time with the NRDC, she went on to get her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, funded by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship and the Lucille Packard Stanford Graduate Fellowship, within the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources with an emphasis in hydrologic

ecosystem services Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, grassland ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems. Th ...

in 2010. Brauman's interdisciplinary dissertation, under the direction of Gretchen Daily and David Freyberg, brought together elements of hydrology, ecohydrology, and economics to understand the impacts of water extraction on the Big Island of Hawai'i.

Career and research

Currently, Brauman is the Lead Scientist of the Global Water Assessment under the

at the

. Brauman's research incorporates economics and policy into her examination of the availability of water resources. Much of her work examines how human changes to our landscape, in particular through the growing of food, affect the quality and quantity of our water resources. Brauman's interest in understanding and valuing the

of landscapes runs through much of her work - whether it be provisioning drinking water, irrigation water,

carbon sequestration Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool. Carbon dioxide () is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical, and physical processes. These changes can be accelerated through changes in land ...

, or food security. Her research, at the intersection of society and science, provides critical information to resource managers (e.g. agricultural producers) that can improve water use efficiency. Brauman also works collaboratively with multiple international groups examining ecosystem services globally. She is part of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a group advocating for recognition of the value of nature to human populations. From 2020 to 2021, Brauman was the Water and Climate Resilience Fellow at the US Department of Defense through a Science Technology Policy Fellowship with AAAS.

Notable publications

Brauman's work, published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals (e.g. ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

, Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences,

Environmental Research Letters ''Environmental Research Letters'' is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, open-access, scientific journal covering research on all aspects of environmental science. It is published by IOP Publishing. The editor-in-chief is Daniel Kammen (University of Cal ...

, Water Resources Research)'' is highly cited. A few of her most highly cited works are listed below: *Solutions for a cultivated planet, ''Nature'', 2011 *The Nature and Value of Ecosystem Services: an overview highlights hydrologic services, ''

Annual Review of Environment and Resources The ''Annual Review of Environment and Resources'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes review articles about environmental science and environmental engineering. It was first published in 1976 under the name the ''Annual Review ...

'', 2007 *Improvements in rop water productivity increase water sustainability and food security - a global analysis, ''Environmental Research Letters,'' 2013

Awards and recognition

*2012, Planet Under Pressure, Best Early Career Researcher Poster. Water Wise: Are we getting enough crop per drop? *2014, Future Earth Fellow, Future Earth Young Scientists Networking Conference on Ecosystems and Human Well being in the green economy *2015, Policy Fellow, Center for the Study of Politics and Government, University of Minnesota *2018-2019 Fellow for the Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science, run by the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

's (AAAS) Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brauman, Kate Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area Columbia College (New York) alumni Stanford University alumni Natural Resources Defense Council people University of Minnesota faculty American ecologists American women ecologists