Seminar: Land Change Modeling as Socio-Environmental Synthesis

Daniel G. Brown (PhD in Geography, 1992, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. His work, published in over 150 refereed articles, chapters, and proceedings papers, has aimed at understanding human–environment interactions through a focus on land use and land cover changes, through modeling these changes, and through spatial analysis and remote sensing methods for characterizing landscape patterns. Recent work has used agent-based and other spatial simulation models to understand and forecast landscape changes that have impacts on carbon storage and other ecosystem services, and human health and well-being. He has conducted field work on three different continents: North America, Asia, and Africa. He has chaired the Land Use Steering Group and Carbon Cycle Steering Group and was a lead coordinating author for the third National Climate Assessment, all under the auspices of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. In addition, he has served as a member of the NASA Land Cover and Land Use Change Science Team, as panelist for the National Research Council, NASA, EPA, USDA Forest Service, the National Science Foundation, and the European Research Council, and on the Editorial Boards for Landscape Ecology, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, and the Journal of Land Use Science. In 2009 he was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.