About William

Bill Parton has spent the last 40 years studying the impacts of human activity on ecosystems and the environment with a focus on climatic change research and atmosphere-biosphere interactions. He was trained as a meteorologist and has made a career as an ecosystem ecologist with a primary research focus on the development of ecosystem models which predict the impact of human activity on natural and agricultural ecosystems. He is a primary author of the DayCent, Century,and ForCent models which are widely used around the world and was involved with the development of DayCent-CHEM model . He has published numerous( greater than 150 ) papers which describe his modeling and ecosystem biogeochemical research. Dr. Parton has been a Senior Research Scientist and Professor at Colorado State University for 34 years. Synergistic Activities: 1. Development and web-based distribution of the CENTURY Ecosystem Model. 2. Linking of the CENTURY Ecosystem Model with the RAMS Atmospheric mesoscale model. 3. Linking of the CENTURY Agroecosystem Model with the ASM Economic Model. 4. National Research Council Committee on Geophysical and Environmental Data, Member 1994-1998. 5. Chair of the SCOPE Tree-Grass Interactions Committee - 1995-2000.

Website CV

Interests

  • Century and DayCent Ecosystem Models: Dr. Parton is one of the main developers of the widely used Century/DayCent/ForCent ecosystem models. The model has been used extensively to evaluate the impact of climate and land use changes on ecosystem dynamics for agricultural and natural( forest , grassland and savanna) ecosystems around the world. A list of the publications using these models is found on the Century web site (http://www.nrel.colostate.edu/projects/century/). The Century web site also contains a description of the models, power points which show how the model has been used in previous publications , versions of the model used in existing publications, and text which describe how to set up the model for different research sites. http://www.nrel.colostate.edu/projects/daycent/index.html

Education

Ph.D. , Meteorology - University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma, 1972

M.S. , Meteorology - University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma, 1968

B.S., Meteorology - Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania, 1966

Awards, Honors, Grants

  • Ecological Society of America Fellow,
  • American Geophysical Union Fellow,