{"id":86134,"date":"2025-07-23T15:23:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T19:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/?p=86134"},"modified":"2025-08-25T12:18:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T16:18:27","slug":"seeing-the-world-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/seeing-the-world-from-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing the World from Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karen Seto (GRS’95, GRS’00) arrived at Boston University in 1992 with aspirations of becoming a foreign service officer. Drawn to BU\u2019s international relations program and its roster of former ambassadors, she envisioned a global diplomatic career.<\/p>\n

\"Karen
Karen Seto (GRS’95, GRS’00).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But a single class\u2014natural resource economics with Professor Robert Kaufmann<\/a>\u2014changed everything. That course, followed by a transformative remote sensing class with Professor Curtis Woodcock<\/a>, opened her eyes to a new way of seeing the world\u2014literally.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was transformative to see the world from space,\u201d Seto recalls. \u201cI remember seeing a satellite image of Hong Kong, where I was born, and being amazed that you could see the differences between Hong Kong and China.\u201d That moment sparked a lifelong fascination with remote sensing and urbanization.<\/p>\n

Today, Seto is one of the world\u2019s leading experts on the effects of contemporary urbanization on the planet. She developed the first global forecast of urban expansion, and\u2014using a combination of satellite remote sensing, modeling methods, and fieldwork\u2014her research has advanced understanding of urbanization\u2019s effects on climate change, biodiversity, and food systems. In recognition of her groundbreaking contributions to urban science and her enduring impact on global environmental research, she will be honored this fall with a 2025 BU Arts & Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m humbled and really honored,\u201d says Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at Yale University<\/a>. \u201cBU was such an exciting place and the faculty\u2014these two professors\u2014literally changed my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that class with Kaufmann, Seto switched to an interdisciplinary graduate program, earning an MA in international relations and resource and environmental management, followed by a Ph.D. in Geography at BU, with Kaufmann and Woodcock as her co-advisors. Her dissertation focused on urbanization in China, a topic she chose because of the dynamic spatial changes unfolding there.<\/p>\n

\u201cBU Geography at that time was an incredibly exciting place intellectually. It was one of the leading remote sensing centers in the world, and I was one of the few people using satellite data to study urbanization at the time,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the same time, there were also economists, political scientists, ecologists in the department. It was an incubator for novel science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past 30 years, Seto has pioneered the use of satellite remote sensing to understand how cities, especially those in the Global South, grow and how that growth affects the demand for energy, materials, and land, while transforming habitats, agricultural lands, and carbon stocks. Her work has taken her across Asia, with over two decades of fieldwork in China, more than a decade in India, as well as projects in Nepal, Qatar, and Vietnam. She has served as Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th and 6th Assessment Reports, co-chaired the National Academy of Science\u2019s Climate Security Roundtable, and co-founded the international science program Urbanization and Global Environmental Change.
\nIn 2012, her lab produced the first-ever global, spatially explicit forecast of urban expansion and its potential effects on carbon stocks\u2014a milestone in a global change and urban science. And in 2012, along with several collaborators, she developed a new theoretical framework\u2014urban land teleconnections\u2014to understand how urbanization affects the world. This work and related studies have placed urbanization on international science agendas such as The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an international organization committed to strengthening the role of science in public decision-making on biodiversity and ecosystem services, Seto says.<\/p>\n

\u201cConventionally, the environmental effects of urbanization are thought to be primarily local or regional. Our framework helps to understand that cities affect places far from them through the demand for resources to build and power cities,\u201d she explains. \u201cNow that concept is widely understood. But when we published this paper, it was the first to really develop this framework\u2014that the aggregate effects of urbanization are global in scope. In other words, urbanization is not only a local issue. It\u2019s also a global issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seto\u2019s accolades include election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a recipient of awards from the American Association of Geographers and the Ecological Society of America. At Yale, she teaches courses on urbanization and sustainability, urban mitigation of climate change, and advanced remote sensing. In addition, she directs Yale\u2019s <\/span>Hixon Center<\/span><\/a> for Urban Sustainability and co-directs the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

And as the world becomes increasingly urban, Seto continues to be inspired by new questions\u2014and the new tools and methods to answer them. \u201cThe questions I\u2019m asking now are different from the ones I asked during my Ph.D.,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re experiencing a geospatial data revolution with thousands of new satellites being launched. At the same urbanization is a bigger trend today than ever, especially in Africa and South Asia. There are new questions emerging. That\u2019s what inspires me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet what excites her most today is mentoring. \u201cI\u2019m entering a different phase in my career,\u201d she says. \u201cI get more joy from mentoring students and postdocs and seeing them succeed.\u201d Her former mentees now work at NASA, in academia, and at startups around the world, and she is \u201cproud that they have been able to pursue things that are intellectually interesting to them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

For Seto, the Distinguished Alumni Award is not just an honor\u2014it\u2019s a full-circle moment of gratitude and inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a testament to the power of great professors,\u201d she says. \u201cWe all have that faculty member who inspires us. Now, more than 25 years after finishing my Ph.D., I still think about the lessons I learned from each of them. They transformed my life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karen Seto (GRS’95, GRS’00) arrived at Boston University in 1992 with aspirations of becoming a foreign service officer. Drawn to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20868,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,548,195],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86134"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86141,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86134\/revisions\/86141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}