David Lea PDF  | Print |  E-mail
Professor, Earth Science

David Lea studies records of past climate-from centuries to hundreds of thousands of years-that are encoded in marine sediments and in coral reefs. By using this natural "marine archive," Lea studies the link between changing ocean composition and global climate change, in particular through the cycle of carbon dioxide. This research is increasingly important to understanding the effect of human-induced changes of Earth's atmosphere through the production of greenhouse gases.



Graduate students attending UCSB will find that that there are essentially no disciplinary boundaries here. You can find whatever expertise you need to pursue your graduate work, both in and outside your chosen department or program, without having to break down any disciplinary boundaries. One of my most successful doctoral students entered with undergraduate and masters degrees in marine biology from Mexican Universities, was a member of our Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Marine Science, and had his home in the Earth Science Department.

In my career at UCSB, I have effortlessly collaborated and consulted with members of virtually every science department on campus, as well as with members of many departments outside the sciences.

When I first arrived at UCSB, I began a collaboration with a young marine biologist which changed my career. It enabled me to utilize experiments with living marine organisms to test hypotheses about how climate signals are archived in marine microfossils. Without the fundamental data from these collaborative experiments, I would not have followed the research path that ultimately lead me to the most important discoveries in my career.

In 2007, I put on a campus-wide program about global warming, which ultimately attracted over 3000 attendees to a series of lectures and public events. UCSB’s interdisciplinary nature was critical to the success of this program. Faculty participants came from departments and schools across campus, ranging from the College of Engineering, to the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, to the English and Sociology Departments, and every science department on campus. It was the different perspectives brought by scholars from wide-ranging disciplines that made the program so novel.