My overall research interests are socio-ecological systems, landscape ecology and spatial land use planning.
I am interested in understanding how conservation interventions such as environmental policy, or payment for ecosystem services modify socio-ecological systems at the landscape level. Specifically, I am interested in the feedbacks of these conservation interventions, which might undermine their effectiveness. These unintended feedbacks of conservation interventions modulated through human decision-making are poorly studied, and are likely to be significant determinants of conservation outcomes.
The relationship between climate change, extreme weather and climate impacts on human and natural systems at the landscape scale is complex, but demand for a more robust and dynamic understanding of climate change impacts is growing.
This project is focussed at the national-ecosystem scale in the Brazilian Amazon, and aims to understand the interactions between climate change mitigation interventions and the wider social and economic landscape. Linking dynamic models of ecosystem change under climate extremes, global models of agricultural commodity prices, and regional-scale models of land prices based on land use change, this project explores robust strategies for fulfilling the Brazilian government's reforestation targets under multiple objectives and in the light of a range of climate-induced and other uncertainties.
This research is part of the Oxford Martin TNC Climate Partnership, and is supervised by Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland.
