Bio

Research Interests

My long-term goal is to promote the sustainability transition in agriculture through robust science via two complementary lines of inquiry: (1) community behavior and environmental decision-making, and (2) remotely sensed agricultural land use and land cover change dynamics.

To ensure long-term food system sustainability, human agricultural activities need to change. One lens through which to evaluate and advocate for such changes is community environmental decision making. I propose that communities, as opposed to individuals, will be the unit of radical change; thus, understanding what motivates communities to adopt new practices may accelerate the sustainability transition in agriculture.

Remote sensing is an incredibly powerful strategy for assessing land use and land cover change dynamics. Modern products offer extremely high spatial and temporal resolution and offer insights inaccessible through other means. The sustainability transition in agriculture relies on landowners adopting practices observable in satellite imagery: crop diversification, agroforestry, native plant buffer stripping, and more. At a plot scale, the economic, biodiversity, and ecosystem service effects of these modified practices can be measured and modeled. I intend to measure or estimate these effects at the local scale, model them over a broader spatial scale, and ideally correlate them with community and individual decision-making factors.

Personal

Before beginning my education and career in agroecology and food system sustainability I was a cook for many years. My longstanding relationship with food underpins nearly all of my professional and personal activities. I enjoy home cooking, particularly for others. Recently, I’ve been working on fresh pasta and corn tortillas with moderate success.