Faculty & Partners
Faculty
Roelof Boumans, PhD
Dr. Roelof Boumans received his doctorate degree in 1994 as a ecosystem ecologist at the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Systems at Louisiana State University. His dissertation focused on the material fluxes through estuaries and involved processing large datasets through field book and datalogger recording. He developed insight into estuarine hydrology and published reports on ecological consequences to altering hydrology. During a postdoctoral position at the Jackson Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, Dr. Boumans was largely involved with developing a landscape model of the Great Bay estuary.
Dr. Boumans joined the Institute of Ecological Economics as an Associate Research Scientist in 1996. His work at ISEE focuses on processes from various ecosystems that take place at the landscape level within the Patuxent River watershed, and the development of landscape modeling protocol that largely makes use of computer technology to structure ecological data into a temporal and spatially relevant database structure.
Robert Costanza, PhD
Dr. Robert Costanza is the Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont.
Dr. Costanza is co-founder and past-president of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) and was chief editor of the Society’s journal: Ecological Economics from its inception until 9/02. He currently serves on the editorial board of eight other international academic journals. He is past president of the International Society for Ecosystem Health. In 1982 he was selected as a Kellogg National Fellow, in 1992 he was awarded the Society for Conservation Biology Distinguished Achievement Award and in 1993 he was selected as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment. In 1998 he was awarded the Kenneth Boulding Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions in Ecological Economics. In 2000 he received an honorary doctorate in natural sciences from Stockholm University. He has served on the Scientific Steering Committee for the LOICZ and AIMES core project of the IGBP; the US EPA National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT); the National Research Council Board on Sustainable Development, Committee on Global Change Research; the National Research Council, Board on Global Change; the US National Committee for the Man and the Biosphere Program, and the National Marine Fisheries Service Committee on Ecosystem Principles.
Dr. Costanza’s research has focused on the interface between ecological and economic systems, particularly at larger temporal and spatial scales. This includes landscape level spatial simulation modeling; analysis of energy and material flows through economic and ecological systems; valuation of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and natural capital; and analysis of dysfunctional incentive systems and ways to correct them. He is the author or co-author of over 300 scientific papers.
Jon Erickson, PhD
Dr. Jon D. Erickson is Associate Professor at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, Environmental Program, at the University of Vermont, and Fellow of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. From 1997 to 2002 he was Assistant Professor of Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he helped build the first Ph.D. program in Ecological Economics.
He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Natural Resource Economics from Cornell University, B.S. and A.S. degrees in Business Management from Cornell and North Country Community College, and was Lecturer and Visiting Professor in statistics at Cornell and the University of Agriculture in Nitra, Slovakia. His research includes work on climate change economics and policy, renewable energy development, greenhouse gas emissions and energy modeling, and community-based watershed management.
Joshua Farley, PhD
Dr. Joshua Farley received his undergraduate degree in Biology from Grinnell College in 1985, his Master in International Affairs and a Certificate in Latin American and Iberian Studies from Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs in 1990, and his Ph.D. in Agricultural, Resource and Managerial Economics from Cornell University in 1999.
From 1996-1999, Joshua taught ecological economics at the School for Field Studies, Centre for Rainforest Studies (CRS), serving as program director for his final year. While at CRS, he conducted field research in collaboration with community stakeholders and students applying ecological economics to local environmental problems. Specific projects focused on the valuation of ecosystem services from riparian forests for local dairy farmers, regional communities and international society; cultural values and ethnoecology; and local, regional and global values of various approaches to forestry.
He joined the Institute as Executive Director in September, 1999. Joshua’s major research interests include mechanisms for allocating resources under local control and national sovereignty that generate global public goods, developing transdisciplinary case study approaches to environmental problem solving as an educational tool, ecological restoration of rainforest ecosystems, economic globalization, ecosystem valuation, watershed management, and international development.
Partners
Simulistics
Simulistics is a small entrepreneurial organization which works in close collaboration with several customers on research projects in the earth, environmental and life sciences. The understanding they have gained from this work of how models are created and used by a scientific community inspires the development of their general-purpose modelling software.
Simulistics develops and distributes Simile, modelling and simulation software for complex dynamic systems in the earth, environmental and life sciences. They use unique logic-based declarative modelling technology to represent the interactions in these systems in a clearly structured, visually intuitive way.
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
The Mission of the Gund Institute is to pursue research, education and design that addresses pressing ecological, economic, and social issues within an integrated framework.
An international leader in the field, the Gund Institute works collaboratively with stakeholders throughout the world to expand the boundaries of ecological economics theory and practice.
Ongoing activities include:
- Developing scenarios for comparing alternative future from local to global.
- Translating ecological services valuation to inform policy and improve market efficiency.
- Identify tools and techniques that bring communities together to define and create a sustainable and equitable future fro themselves.
- Designing internet-based applications to share ecological and economic information with the public via the world wide web.
- Expanding conventional interpretations of the financial bottom line for business and government to include natural, social, and human capital essential to human wellbeing.
