The HERO REU Experience: Undergraduate Research on Vulnerability to Climate Change in Local Places

Undergraduates are an integral part of many university research programs. We are very pleased to showcase the efforts of some of our undergraduate students in the papers that follow, and to introduce them within the larger context of our research, here in this introduction. The Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) program is a five-year research program, funded by the National Science Foundation (through an infrastructure grant) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (through the Office of Global Programs). Our goal is to develop a research approach to monitor ongoing human-environment relationships at the local scale as they interface with the impacts of global climate change. Our work forms from a collaborative effort by geographers at four Universities (Clark University, Kansas State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Arizona), builds on previous work in the Global Changes in Local Places project (Kates and Torrie 1998; Wilbanks and Kates 1999; AAG 2003) and hopes to push the frontiers of collaborative learning (Pike et al. 2004; Yarnal and Neff 2004, 2006).