Our group investigates how people meet their needs through use of ecosystems and natural resources, and how policy and land rights mediate this relationship. The group is led by Brian E Robinson, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at McGill University, and a member of the Bieler School on the Environment. Our research methods draw from environmental and development economics, ecology, development geography, and geographic information sciences to answer policy-relevant questions.
For practicing inclusive science in the lab, see here.
For more details on Brian, see his CV here.
Interests
- Who gets ecosystem services?
- Where to put natural climate solutions?
- How to use national ecosystem accounts?
Education
PhD in Environment & Resources, 2011
University of Wisconsin-Madison
MEng in Water Resources, 2005
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MCP in Environmental Policy & Planning, 2005
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BSc in Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, 1999
Georgia Tech
Latest
- A functional connectivity approach for exploring interactions of multiple ecosystem services in the context of agricultural landscapes in the Canadian prairies
- A global evidence map of human well-being and biodiversity co-benefits and trade-offs of natural climate solutions
- From consumption to context: assessing poverty and inequality across diverse socio-ecological systems in Ghana
- Hundreds of millions of people in the tropics need both wild harvests and other forms of economic development for their well-being
- Livelihoods and poverty in small-scale fisheries in western Amazonia
- Managing environmental knowledge networks to navigate complexity
- Mapping socio-economic status using mixed data: a hierarchical Bayesian approach
- Model-Based Prediction for Small Domains Using Covariates: A Comparison of Four Methods
- Nature’s contribution to poverty alleviation, human wellbeing and the SDGs
- Rural household energy transition in China: Trends and challenges
- Spatial modelling and inequalities of environmental noise in Accra, Ghana
- Environmental impacts of renting rangelands: integrating remote sensing and household surveys at the parcel level
- Identifying deprived “slum” neighbourhoods in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area of Ghana using census and remote sensing datal
- Phenotyping urban built and natural environments with high-resolution satellite images and unsupervised deep learning
- Strangers in a strange land: Mapping household and neighbourhood associations with improved wellbeing outcomes in Accra, Ghana
- Substitutability of natural and human capitals: lessons from a simple exploratory model
- Synthesizing the links between secure housing tenure and health for more equitable cities
- The application of semantic modelling to map pollination service provisioning at large landscape scales
- The limits of livelihood diversification and sustainable household well-being, evidence from China
- Strategy games to improve environmental policymaking
- Field measurements of indoor and community air quality in rural Beijing before, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown
- Impacts of agricultural commodity frontier expansion on smallholder livelihoods: An assessment through the lens of access to land and resources in the Argentine Chaco
- Land Tenure Security and Sustainable Development
- Property rights play a pivotal role in the distribution of ecosystem services among beneficiaries
- Quantifying within-city inequalities in child mortality across neighbourhoods in Accra, Ghana: a Bayesian spatial analysis
- Socioeconomic and Demographic Associations with Wintertime Air Pollution Exposures at Household, Community, and District Scales in Rural Beijing, China
- Spatial heterogeneity in drinking water sources in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), Ghana
- Quantifying the foodshed: a systematic review of urban food flow and local food self-sufficiency research
- Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs
- Increasing decision relevance of ecosystem service science
- Determining Freshwater Lake Communities’ Vulnerability to Snowstorms in the Northwest Territories
- Facing the challenges of using place-based social-ecological research to support ecosystem service governance at multiple scales
- Influence of land tenure interventions on human well-being and environmental outcomes
- Next steps for ecosystem service models: integrating complex interactions and beneficiaries
- Participatory Modeling of Water Vulnerability in Remote Alaskan Households Using Causal Loop Diagrams?
- Welcome to Wowchemy, the website builder for Hugo
- A factor-income approach to estimating grassland protection subsidy payments to livestock herders in Inner Mongolia, China
- A review of spatial targeting methods of payment for ecosystem services
- Geographic versus institutional drivers of nitrogen footprints: A comparison of two urban universities
- Household transitions to clean energy in a multiprovincial cohort study in China
- How do practitioners characterize land tenure security?
- Rural-urban connectivity and agricultural land management across the Global South
- The global forest transition as a human affair
- The impact of snowstorms, droughts and locust outbreaks on livestock in Inner Mongolia: anticipation and adaptation to environmental shocks
- Who is Vulnerable to Ecosystem Service Change? Reconciling Locally Disaggregated Ecosystem Service Supply and Demand
- Air Quality, Home Heating, and Well-Being under Beijing’s Ban on Household Coal Burning
- Aligning evidence generation and use across health, development, and environment
- An evaluation of air quality, home heating and well-being under Beijing’s programme to eliminate household coal use
- Disaggregating livelihood dependence on ecosystem services to inform land management
- Ecosystem service synergies/trade-offs informing the supply-demand match of ecosystem services: Framework and application
- Measuring what matters: actionable information for the landscape ecology of conservation biocontrol
- Realizing the values of natural capital for inclusive, sustainable development: Informing China’s new ecological development strategy
- Reimagining the potential of Earth observations for ecosystem service assessments
- Soil-targeted interventions could alleviate locust and grasshopper pest pressure in West Africa
- Telecoupled Sustainable Livelihoods in an Era of Rural–Urban Dynamics: The Case of China
- The ecological insurance trap
- Water Vulnerability in Arctic Households: A Literature-based Analysis
- What conditions are associated with household water vulnerability in the Arctic?
- How Do Capital Asset Interactions Affect Livelihood Sensitivity to Climatic Stresses? Insights From the Northeastern Floodplains of Bangladesh
- How do herders do well? Livestock grazing profitability potential in Inner Mongolia China across ecosystem types
- Incorporating Land Tenure Security into Conservation
- Livelihood exposure to climatic stresses in the north-eastern floodplains of Bangladesh
- Response to Kabisch and Colleagues
- Community land titles alone will not protect forests
- From Molecules to Management: Mechanisms and Consequences of Locust Phase Polyphenism”
- Household livelihood strategy choices, impact factors, and environmental consequences in Miyun reservoir watershed, China
- Institutional change in social-ecological systems: The evolution of grassland management in Inner Mongolia
- Nitrogen balance dynamic during 2000-2010 in the Yangtze River Basin croplands, with special reference to the relative contributions of arable area and synthetic fertilizer N application rate changes
- When, where, and how nature matters for ecosystem services: challenges for the next generation of ecosystem service models
- Using ecosystem service trade-offs to inform water conservation policies and management practices
- Conservation vs. livelihoods: spatial management of non-timber forest product harvests in a two-dimensional model
- Evolving frontier land markets and the opportunity cost of sparing forests in western Amazonia
- Meta-studies in land system science: current coverage and prospects”
- Living With Locusts: Connecting Soil Nitrogen, Locust Outbreaks, Livelihoods, and Livestock Markets
- Complex tenure and deforestation: Implications for conservation incentives in the Ecuadorian Amazon
- Does secure land tenure save forests? A meta-analysis of the relationship between land tenure and tropical deforestation
- Benefits, costs, and livelihood implications of a regional payment for ecosystem service program
- Managing wild resources: institutional choice and the recovery of resource rent in southwest China
- Understanding the Challenges and Rewards of Social-Ecological Research in China
- Are there spatial spillovers in the adoption of clean technology? The case of organic dairy farming
- Cultivating a demand for clean cookstoves
- Common and Privatized: Conditions for Wise Management of Matsutake Mushrooms in Northwest Yunnan Province, China