Seto, Karen
Karen Seto
Karen Seto is the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment. Dr. Seto is a leading expert on urbanization and its impact on the planet, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and food systems. Dr. Seto is a trained geographer who utilizes remote sensing, modeling, and field interviews. She researches urbanization, land change, urban expansion, and the environmental consequences of urbanization. Her research findings advance understanding of the links between urban mitigation of climate change, urban energy use and emissions, urbanization and food systems, and the effects of urban expansion on biodiversity and cropland loss.
“The fact that cities are responsible for more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions means that if cities do something, they can solve two-thirds of the problem. So that’s pretty exciting.” - Dr. Karen C. Seto
Reba, Meredith & Seto, Karen. 2018. City unseen: New visions of an urban planet. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Rusk, J., Maharjan, A., Tiwari, P., Chen, T-H K., Shneiderman, S., Turin, M., Seto, K.C., 2022. Multi-hazard susceptibility and exposure assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, Science of the Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150039.
Seto, K.C., Churkina, G., Hsu, A., Keller, M., Newman, P.W.G., Qin, B., Ramaswami, A. 2021. From Low- to Net-Zero Carbon Cities: The Next Global Agenda, Annual Review of Environment and Resources. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-050120-113117.
Grainger, C., Tiwari, P.C., Joshi, B., Reba, M., Seto, K.C. 2021. Who Is Vulnerable and Where Do They Live? Case Study of Three Districts in the Uttarakhand Region of India Himalaya, Mountain Research and Development, https://doi.org/10.1659/mrd-journal-d-19-00041.1.
Ramaswami, A., Tong, K., Canadell, J.G., Jackson, R.B., Stokes, E., Dhakal, S., Finch, M., Jittrapirom, P., Singh, N., Yamagata, Y., Yewdall, E., Yona, L., Seto, K.C. 2021. Carbon analytics for net-zero emissions sustainable cities, Nature Sustainability, 10.1038/s41893-021-00715-5.
Griffith, C., Seto, K., Solecki, W., (Eds.), 2016. The Routledge Handbook on Urbanisation and Global Environmental Change, Routledge, New York, NY.
10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China. Executive Produced by Karen Seto. SPICE, 2006. https://spicestore.stanford.edu/products/10-000-shovels-chinas-urbanizat…
Dr. Seto was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the U.S. as a child. She went to the University of California- Santa Barbara and earned her bachelor’s degree in political science in 1991. She then went to Boston University. In 1995, she completed a joint master’s degree in resource and environmental management and international relations. Following this, she attended Boston University for her doctorate in geography, working with Robert C. Kaufmann and Curtis E. Woodlock. She graduated in 2000. Her dissertation was about urban land expansion and its impacts on farmland in the Pearl River Delta of China. She pioneered the study of urban growth with time series analysis by combining socioeconomic data and satellite imagery. Her study found that between 1988 and 1996, urbanization increased by over 300%, with the majority being converted from agricultural land.
After completing her doctorate from Boston University, Dr. Seto was appointed a faculty member at Stanford University in 2000. She received the NASA New Investigator Program in Earth Science (Early Career) Award in 2000, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2004.
At Stanford, she had appointments at the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Institute for International Studies. Her early work as a professor focused on documenting and analyzing the relationship between economic development, urbanization, and land use in China and Vietnam using satellite remote sensing and field interviews.
In 2008, Dr. Seto joined the faculty of the Yale School of the Environment (at the time called the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies). In 2011, Dr. Seto received the Danmarks Nationalbank Foreign Scientist Housing Award and the Taiwan National Science Council Visiting Foreign Scholar Fellowship.
In 2014, she became the Associate Dean for Research and Director of Doctoral Studies and received the Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and Advising at Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. In 2015, Dr. Seto was a Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology Visiting Foreign Scholar. In 2017, she was named Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science.
Dr. Seto worked at National Taipei University and the University of Copenhagen as a visiting professor. Dr. Seto executive produced the documentary film 10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China.
Dr. Seto serves on numerous national and international scientific bodies. She currently co-chairs the U.S. National Academies Climate Security Roundtable. She also chairs the U.S. National Academies Policy and Global Affairs Division and co-chairs the subcommittee on U.S.-China Scientific Engagement at U.S. National Academies. From 2002 to 2008, she led the Ecosystem Management Tools for the Commission on Ecosystem Management at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. She co-chaired the International Project on Urbanization and Global Environmental Change from 2005 to 2016.
She co-led the urban mitigation chapter for the 5th and 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports, which explored options to mitigate greenhouse gases in urban areas. With the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she chaired the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s workshop to advance urban sustainability in China and the United States.
She served as co-founder and co-chair of, Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC), previously known as the International Human Dimensions Programme, and Future Earth from 2006 to 2016.
Dr. Seto has been recognized for her scientific contributions with many awards.. Dr. Seto is an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, Dr. Seto received the Human Dimensions of Global Change Research Excellence Award from the American Association of Geographers. In 2017, she received the Ecological Society of America, Sustainability Science Award. In 2018, Dr. Seto and Yale colleague Eli Fenichel received a Resources for the Future Award to evaluate satellite data products used to measure and map urbanization in the Himalayas.
Karen Seto. January 9, 2023. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Seto
Nobel Prize Outreach. 2023. Karen Seto. https://www.nobelprize.org/events/nobel-prize-summit/2021/panellists/kar…. Retrieved February 9. 2023.
Seto, Karen. 2021. Directory [https://environment.yale.edu/profile/seto]. Yale School of the Environment. Retrieved February 9, 2023, from https://environment.yale.edu/profile/seto/.