Local & Regional Analysis of Ecosystem Services & Land Use Using Economic Valuation & Geospatial Techniques

Please join us for our next SSIG colloquium, on Wednesday, April 24th, from 12-1 p.m. Our speaker will be UI Department of Geography assistant professor Heather Sander. This is our last SSIG colloquium for this year. We will meet in the Commons (302), Schaffer Hall.

Humans rely on ecosystem services, valuable goods and services produced by ecosystems such as recreational opportunities, flood control, and drinking water, for their well-being. Human activities that alter the arrangement of landscapes also alter ecosystems, however, and may reduce the delivery of these services. These effects rarely receive adequate consideration in policy making since systems for forecasting them are limited and their results often are not in formats that are relevant to the policy process.  As a result, current land-use plans and policies are frequently based on incomplete appraisals of environmental effects and may have negative environmental consequences. In order to remedy this problem, my research uses economic valuation and geospatial techniques to increase our understanding of how we as humans interact with and alter our landscapes and of how this alteration may impact ecosystem service delivery and human well-being. This talk will provide examples of this research, focusing particularly on cultural ecosystem services and land-use change at the local and regional levels.

Please contact Anthony Paik at anthony-paik@uiowa.edu with any questions or inqueries.