Seminar Series: Erik Nelson

Erik Nelson of Bowdoin College will present during the series. His talk is titled "Modeling Land Use Change and its Impacts on Biodiversity, Carbon Sequestration, and Crop Production for the Continental U.S."

The conversion of native grasslands, forests and wetlands to croplands, plantations and urban areas has led to vast increases in food and timber production along with other commodities, but has come at a significant cost in terms of environmental degradation and declining biodiversity. In this presentation, Nelson will discuss how he used models to compare land-use change over time and analyze the resulting impacts on biodiversity and carbon sequestration under a base case business-as-usual scenario with alternative scenarios that assume different policy and market drivers for land use.