---
id: people/james-kremer
about:
  label: James N. Kremer
  description: >-
    Coastal systems ecologist at the University of Connecticut who built
    simulation models of estuaries and, with Stephen Lansing, of Bali's water
    temple networks.
  tags:
    - estuaries
    - ecosystem models
    - Bali
    - eutrophication
person:
  affiliation: University of Connecticut
  role: coastal systems ecologist
  homepage: 'https://marinesciences.uconn.edu/person/james-kremer'
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'James Kremer (Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut)'
      url: 'https://marinesciences.uconn.edu/person/james-kremer'
    - title: 'A Coastal Marine Ecosystem: Simulation and Analysis (Springer)'
      url: 'https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-66717-6'
    - title: >-
        A Coastal Marine Ecosystem: Simulation and Analysis, table of contents
        (MPDL eBooks)
      url: 'https://ebooks.mpdl.mpg.de/ebooks/Record/EB000669170/TOC'
    - title: J. Stephen Lansing (Wikipedia)
      url: 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Stephen_Lansing'
    - title: 'J. Stephen Lansing, publications (CASBS, Stanford)'
      url: 'https://casbs.stanford.edu/people/j-stephen-lansing'
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
James N. Kremer is a coastal systems ecologist and professor emeritus of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut, with a PhD from the University of Rhode Island.[^1] His research joins field studies with numerical models of how organisms interact with their physical and chemical surroundings, in temperate estuaries, shallow lagoons, a kelp forest, a tropical sandy bottom and the oceanic plankton. He writes that his modelling perspective "remains that of an ecologist rather than a mathematician or statistician".[^1] Later work traced how land use in coastal watersheds delivers nitrogen to coastal waters and drives eutrophication, with projects in Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay, and models meant as a basis for management decisions.[^1]

With Scott Nixon he wrote *A Coastal Marine Ecosystem: Simulation and Analysis* (Springer, 1978, Ecological Studies volume 24), built around a model of Narragansett Bay; Kremer was then in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California.[^1,2,3]

With the anthropologist [J. Stephen Lansing](/people/stephen-lansing/) he showed that Bali's water temple networks can organise themselves.[^4] The two kept working together, on volcanic fertilization of Balinese rice paddies in 2001 and, in 2023, on how adaptive irrigation by Balinese farmers reduces greenhouse gas emissions and increases rice yields.[^5] He is co-author of the 1993 paper [Emergent Properties of Balinese Water Temple Networks](/articles/lansing-kremer-balinese-water-temple-networks/), which also figures in the [Bali scenario](/scenarios/bali-subak-water-temples/) and on the [questions people ask](/about/faq/) page.