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Thomas Turrentine

Thomas Turrentine began his anthropology career studying processes of cultural change among villagers in the Peruvian Andes. For the past 12 years, he has been with the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, studying consumer and citizen response to clean automotive technologies and policies. Dr. Turrentine has been spearheading the development and funding of an interdisciplinary research center at ITS–Davis, which will focus on understanding the problems of transportation in fragile environments. He is currently working on market strategies for fuel-cell vehicles. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Davis, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Laval, Quebec. He has conducted field research in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA; served on an OECD panel on solutions to the negative impacts of car use; and works with the U.S. National Park Service on solutions to the environmental impacts of car use in national parks.

Road Ecology

Science and Solutions

A central goal of transportation is the delivery of safe and efficient services with minimal environmental impact. In practice, though, human mobility has flourished while nature has suffered. Awareness of the environmental impacts of roads is increasing, yet information remains scarce for those interested in studying, understanding, or minimizing the ecological effects of roads and vehicles.

Road Ecology addresses that shortcoming by elevating previously localized and fragmented knowledge into a broad and inclusive framework for understanding and developing solutions.