Recent emphases include water quality, human activities affecting wildlife populations, fire management, global climate change, and forest and land use change in the US and internationally.

Seeks to enhance scholarship related to the ways in which economic and social systems (at multiple scales) influence, and are influenced by, the natural world. Efforts will focus on issues related to water quality and quantity, land-use choices and outcomes, and climate change.

Initiative 1: Human Activity and Environmental and Natural Resource Outcomes

  • Goal: Become a leader in coordinating and conducting research and disseminating knowledge on the interactions between human activities and environmental and natural resource outcomes.

Initiative 2: Water Resource Management

  • Goal: Become a leader in conducting and disseminating interdisciplinary research on issues related to water quality and quantity and their interaction with land-use decisions and outcomes.

Initiative 3: Climate Change

  • Goal: Lead in developing disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship on integrated assessment of climate change impacts, mitigation, and adaptation.

Research Projects

Faculty Working in this Area

Researchers in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education at Penn State working in the area of Agriculture and Food Systems.