University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Mark D. Schwartz is a phenoclimatologist and distinguished professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research interests are focused on plant phenology lower atmosphere interactions during the onsets of spring and autumn in mid latitudes, detecting climatic change, and assessing vegetation condition with remote sensing imagery. Prof. Schwartz received his PhD from the University of Kansas in 1985.

His scholarship includes over ninety peer-reviewed publications, mostly in journals such as Nature, Global Change Biology, Journal of Climate, International Journal of Climatology, Remote Sensing of Environment, and International Journal of Biometeorology, and a second edition of the edited book Phenology: An Integrative Environmental Science. Specific papers have assessed climate variability in the north-central USA using air mass analysis, and changes in the onset of spring during the last 50-100 years in Wisconsin, North America, China, and across Northern Hemisphere temperate land areas using spring phenology and phenoclimatic models.

One focus for on-going and future work is continued development of the USA National Phenology Network ( http://www.usanpn.org), where he is co-founder. The USA-NPN will (among other things) facilitate assessment of the long-term impacts of climate change on the biosphere.