ENVIRONMENTAL VENTURE PROJECTS: Ecosystem Services and Conservation: Ecosystem Services and Conservation
Natural Flood Mitigation »
Deforestation and unplanned development increase the risk of flood damage to lives and property, particularly in dense urban and coastal areas. Decision-makers around the world want to incorporate into planning information about the conditions in which natural ecosystems and land management can help mitigate flood risks.
Scenarios for Survival of a UNESCO World Heritage Site »
Combining the Distribution of Semi-Aquatic Mammal Populations with Ecohydrologic Analysis
The Effects of Wildlife Loss and Land Use Change on Rodent-Borne Disease Risk in East Africa »
This project explores whether the loss of large wildlife and changes in land use increase the risk of infectious disease in developing tropical countries.
An interdisciplinary approach to understanding the role of anthropogenic fire in the desert grasslands of Australia »
Intentional burning is increasingly being recognized as an important force in shaping ecosystems over time. In Australia, the impact of anthropogenic fire has been particularly significant, with indigenous burning hypothesized to have radically altered the continent's biogeography.
Quantitative natural resource ethics »
Quantitative ethical analysis has primarily focused on medical ethics, for instance determining the acceptable rate of sickness and death due to an immunization program. But recent work in natural resource valuation provides a means to couple such quantitative rigor with environmental ethics, thereby grounding the ethical discussion with a realistic...
From Bangalore to the Bay Area: Comparative urban growth patterns across the pacific rim »
Developing nations are moving toward Western-style ways of living, resulting in land- and resource intensive development. What does the globalization of the American suburb mean for the global environment? This project addresses the question through quantitative and qualitative analysis of case studies from China, India and the U.S.
Carbon dioxide sequestration by forests: The importance of cation and phosphorous limitation and its relationship to landscape evolution »
This interdisciplinary research will investigate how landscape processes may influence chemical weathering, which may have important impacts on the input of nutrients to forest ecosystems. This project will develop coupled numerical models of landscape evolution and chemical weathering, and test and calibrate these models in the ecosystems in Hawaii and...
Feasibility study: Reintroduction of the bay checkerspot butterfly to Stanford University lands »
Researchers are conducting a broad feasibility study concerning the re-introduction of the Bay checkerspot butterfly to Stanford lands. This butterfly sub-species is federally listed as a threatened species and is restricted to serpentine soils, since the plants that it depends on cannot survive competition with Eurasian grasses on other soil...
Enhancing the conservation value of countryside: Hawaii and Costa Rica as test systems »
This project's overarching goal is to make conservation economically attractive and commonplace on land that is managed largely for human enterprise -- "countryside." Researchers propose to develop the scientific, economic and institutional basis for achieving this goal. We aim to characterize the potential conservation value of countryside in terms of...
Consequences of increased global meat consumption on the global environment -- trade in virtual water, energy & nutrients »
Meat production is projected to double by 2020 due to increased per capita global consumption of meat and population growth. Most of this increase in production will come through industrialized animal production systems. These trends will have major consequences on the global environment. Vast transfers of "virtual" energy, water and...
Mitigating future arsenic catastrophes in Asia: An integrative study of processes controlling arsenic release induced by land use »
Arsenic is having a devastating impact on human health in Asia. In Bangladesh and West Bengal alone, an estimated 57 million people are exposed to drinking water with arsenic concentrations exceeding the World Health Organization's recommended limit of 10 µg/L. It is our hypothesis that different land uses...