Volker Christian Radeloff, PhD - US grants

Over the past century, rapid growth of human population and the human economy has transformed landscapes around the world. These transformations have reduced and fragmented natural habitat, resulting in loss of biodiversity and many ecosystem services. Maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services while meeting the needs of human society for food, fiber, fuel, and other essentials requires integrated assessment of the biological and economic consequences of land use and land management. This interdisciplinary research project will develop and apply an integrated dynamic landscape-modeling approach to predict and compare how alternative policy incentives and market forces affect land-use decisions; how resulting land-use changes affect species conservation, carbon storage, and the value of commodity production; and how this will affect future land-use decisions. The investigators will approach these questions by developing statistical models based on observed landowner behavior in order to predict likely land-use changes as a function of current land-use conditions, public policy, and market opportunities. Land-use changes have consequences for species conservation, ecosystem services, and economic returns. Land-use patterns shaped by these decisions will serve as input into models that predict the status of species, the flow of ecosystem services, and the value of commodity production from the landscape. Current land-use decisions and the resulting set of consequences will set the stage for future conditions that shape future policies and market opportunities, which, in turn, will affect future land-use changes. This integrated approach will be used to analyze the likely effect of alternative policies on land-use change dynamics, the consequent trajectory for species conservation, ecosystem services, and economic activities on the landscape. The integrated dynamic landscape modeling approach will be applied to landscapes at several geographic scales, from the 48 contiguous states to regional analysis applied to the Willamette Basin in Oregon and the Northern Lakes Region in Wisconsin. Two questions will be addressed by using different scales of analysis within the same modeling approach: (1) How much difference does inclusion of increased detail and spatial resolution make to the analysis and results?, and (2) Can analyses be nested in the sense that one can use the broad-scale analysis to highlight areas and species of concern, at which point more detailed analysis can be undertaken using finer scale analysis?

Conserving biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem services necessary for human welfare in the long-run in the midst of a growing human economy with pressing current needs requires careful planning based on an understanding of the full set of consequences of human choices and actions. This project will integrate economic and ecological research into a coherent framework to predict landscape dynamics and the effects of these dynamics on biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and economic production. The integrated landscape model developed in this project will provide tools and insights that can be used to improve decision making by a broad range of stakeholders. By facilitating careful thinking about the pattern, extent, and intensity of human activities across the landscape through time, this project may help landowners and policy makers to achieve important species conservation and ecosystem service objectives while also generating high economic returns over the long term. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.

This Doctoral Dissertation Enhancement Program award supports the field research in China of Ms. Jodi Brandt, whose objective is to identify effective strategies of conservation. The specific project will investigate how Tibetan sacred-forest patches, protected areas, contribute to biodiversity in a very important but highly-threatened biodiversity hotspot, the Himalayan Mountains of Southwest China. She will test the hypothesis that bird diversity and abundance are higher in the sacred forests than in the surrounding landscapes, and that the sacred forests are important keystone structures for the maintenance of regional biodiversity. The research will be performed in Northwest Yunnan Province. PhD student Brandt, under the direction of Dr. Volker Radeloff, will conduct the research in collaboration with two experienced Chinese ecologists, an ornithologist from the Southwest Forestry University and a botanist from the Shangri-la Alpine Botanical Garden. They will survey breeding-bird communities and bird habitat in sacred forests near Shangri-la City, the most developed and rapidly changing region in NW Yunnan.
Despite the importance of NW Yunnan for regional avian biodiversity, no research has been done on forest songbirds in the study area. This research represents a foundational study to understand forest-bird habitat and distribution in this rapidly-changing region. It will explore critical ecological concepts in a unique and unstudied region. Acknowledging sacred areas as an important means to protect biodiversity could ensure their continued existence in the face of accelerating political, socioeconomic, and cultural change and may offer new avenues for conservation in other parts of the world.

Intellectual merit:
The proposed research will investigate how spillovers affect incentive-based forest conservation policies in a developing country context. Although economic theory shows that policies which pay landholders to maintain forest cover can generate additional conservation by raising the returns to forested land, it also suggests that these environmental benefits may be substantially undermined by "slippage," negative spillovers of deforestation to other locations. Conversely, benefits could be increased by positive spillovers occurring through knowledge transfers or strategic complementarities in production choices. Understanding the drivers and magnitude of such spillovers is therefore crucial for the design of future incentive-based conservation policies.
Incentive-based policies for forest conservation are expected to expand dramatically under proposed international agreements to reduce carbon emissions and to establish markets for carbon offsets. Most of the low-cost opportunities for reducing carbon emissions will occur in developing countries, but to date there is little research modeling or quantifying incentive-based forest conservation in a developing country context. In contrast to industrialized countries, developing regions are likely to have larger credit constraints, increased land or labor market rigidity, more localized markets due to poor infrastructure, and greater informational barriers. These differences are likely to affect the degree, location, and type of spillovers but have not been adequately studied. In response to this gap in knowledge, the proposed research will: 1. Develop theoretical models of spillovers in a developing country context; 2. Investigate the validity of these theories using new spatially-explicit program and field survey data on Mexico's National Payments for Environmental Services program; and 3. Develop methods to estimate environmental and socioeconomic impacts of incentive-based conservation in the presence of spillovers.
Broader impacts:
The proposed research has several broader impacts. First, the economic theories developed will have important implications for policy design in Mexico and globally. Understanding how incentive-based conservation efforts are affected by spillovers is critical to the creation of future policies, which are currently being promoted by international conservation and development agencies and will likely expand under new international climate agreements. Second, the project will forge long-term research partnerships and networks between international colleagues in Mexico and the U.S., strengthening crossborder research and policy efforts and broadening the participation of underrepresented groups. Spanishspeaking students from both countries will be encouraged to participate as research associates and the team's female leadership will provide positive role models and mentoring opportunities. Third, the project will integrate research and education by providing research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students and by developing new curricular material. The case study of Mexico's program will be used as a teaching tool for undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students in economics and environmental studies. The data will be of future use for a broad set of theoretical and empirical research about incentive-based conservation. The project will also have interdisciplinary broader impacts. Measuring conservation spillovers requires the development of new remote sensing methodologies and tools to measure land-use change. These techniques will be of use to researchers in a variety of disciplines and are directly relevant to ongoing global efforts to create a cost-effective system of measuring and monitoring carbon emissions.

This project examines continent-wide variation in the dimensions of biodiversity. New data are collected on the biodiversity and extinction risk of 2,500 Western Hemisphere reptile species. These data are combined with existing data for mammals, birds, and amphibians to measure and map the diversity of all 13,000 terrestrial vertebrate species of the Americas, in three dimensions. The first is phylo-temporal diversity, measuring the genetically distinctiveness of the species in an area. The second is compositional diversity, measuring which species occur in an area. And the third is trait diversity, measuring how the species in an area vary in place, food, time, and size niches. For each of the three dimensions, measures will reflect differences over space (dissimilarity). All data will be published in open access databases.

The research is important scientifically in representing novel, hemisphere-wide analysis of the genetic, taxonomic, and functional diversity of a major species group. This will allow determination of relationships among the three dimensions of biodiversity, and, by using the extinction risk data, prediction of impending changes in these relationships. These analyses have important practical implications, because the degree to which the dimensions covary will determine the efficiency possible in their conservation. Our PI institutions comprise four universities and the non-governmental organization NatureServe, the latter of which provides a channel for incorporation of results into conservation decisions, as well as providing real-world exposure to the two postdoctoral associates, and three graduate and approximately 40 undergraduate students, who the project will employ. The project includes significant international capacity building through Red List workshops in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Chile, along with research coordination meetings in Brazil. Both students and PIs will be traveling and collaborating with in-country scientists during these meetings, with support provided by the Office of International Science and Engineering.

This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award trains the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists to design biodiversity conservation strategies in the face of novel environments, and develops an integrative program of experiential learning, engaged scholarship, and problem-focused research on biodiversity conservation.

Intellectual Merit: Humans are now the dominant biogeographic, evolutionary, and climatic force on Earth. As we change the environment ever more rapidly, new climate conditions are emerging that have no historical analogs, novel ecosystems are flourishing, and people are creating new land use patterns and demographic, economic, and political realities. This program will support a community of practice in which social scientists, climatologists, ecologists, computer scientists, geneticists, economists, statisticians, remote sensing specialists and others collaborate in interdisciplinary teams to find solutions for future biodiversity conservation in novel environments.

Broader Impacts: This IGERT award advances discovery and understanding by integrating research and experiential learning, and by establishing and strengthening collaborations among disciplines within UW-Madison, and with partners in government, conservation organizations, and abroad. A participatory research approach will ensure broad dissemination of findings, thereby enhancing scientific understanding and social benefits. A suite of new graduate seminars will train students in collaborating, and in communicating with broader audiences, and in integrating research and education. Continuing feedback from agencies and communities will ensure that results are relevant for policy formulation at both state and national levels, and program elements have been designed to engage students from underrepresented groups in partnership with existing on- and off-campus organizations.

IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to establish new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, and to engage students in understanding the processes by which research is translated to innovations for societal benefit.

This research will address how genetic, taxonomic, ecological, and landscape diversity affect the natural control of agricultural pests by predators. The study will focus on three crops (corn, alfalfa, and soybean) and the group of aphid species that attacks them. Aphids are normally kept in check by roughly 20 common predators. Because these predators move frequently among fields and other habitats, their ability to suppress aphids depends upon the diversity of the landscape. Furthermore, aphids contain bacterial symbionts that give their insect hosts tolerance to high temperatures. These symbionts thus make it possible for aphids to evolve in response to global warming. The proposed research will use remote sensing, field experiments, and genetic assays to understand the roles of ecology and evolution in maintaining the natural control of aphid pests.

Corn, alfalfa, and soybean dominate the agricultural landscape of much of the USA, and predators naturally suppress many potential agricultural pests. A changing climate, or another anthropogenic environmental change, could break down this natural control, leading to greater pest problems for US agriculture. Understanding how ecological and evolutionary diversity confers resilience against environmental changes could improve understanding of warning signs of potential pest problems, and also provide possible solutions. The research will not only address this scientific challenge but will also educate the public by enlisting the help of citizen scientists who will sample aphids and predators across the USA, bringing hands-on science into citizen's backyards.