CLARS
Climate migration and urban change across lake regions.
CLARS is an international research program examining climate-related migration, urban change, and the movement of climate knowledge across the Lake Victoria Basin and the North American Great Lakes.
Research focus
The Van Berkel Lab leads work on urban migration modeling and contributes to climate knowledge exchange. The research asks how climate-related mobility may reshape cities, land-use patterns, infrastructure demands, and environmental conditions, while also examining how decision-relevant climate knowledge is produced and used.
Study regions
Work spans cities in the Lake Victoria Basin and the North American Great Lakes, creating a comparative framework for studying migration, urban change, and adaptation across very different institutional and environmental settings.
Methods
Spatial modeling · land-change simulation · participatory GIS · scenario analysis · geovisualization · climate knowledge co-production