Robinson Ecosystems & Livelihoods Lab
Our group investigates how people meet their needs through use of ecosystems and natural resources, and how policy and land rights mediate this relationship. The group is led by Brian E Robinson, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at McGill University, and a member of the Bieler School on the Environment. Our research methods draw from environmental and development economics, ecology, development geography, and geographic information sciences to answer policy-relevant questions.
For practicing inclusive science in the lab, see here.
For more details on Brian, see his CV here.
Interests
- land systems
- ecosystem services
- policy evaluation
- international development
- spatial analysis
Education
PhD in Environment & Resources, 2011
University of Wisconsin-Madison
MEng in Water Resources, 2005
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MCP in Environmental Policy & Planning, 2005
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BSc in Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, 1999
Georgia Tech
Latest
- A functional connectivity approach for exploring interactions of multiple ecosystem services in the context of agricultural landscapes in the Canadian prairies
- A global evidence map of human well-being and biodiversity co-benefits and trade-offs of natural climate solutions
- From consumption to context: assessing poverty and inequality across diverse socio-ecological systems in Ghana
- Hundreds of millions of people in the tropics need both wild harvests and other forms of economic development for their well-being
- Livelihoods and poverty in small-scale fisheries in western Amazonia
- Managing environmental knowledge networks to navigate complexity
- Mapping socio-economic status using mixed data: a hierarchical Bayesian approach
- Model-Based Prediction for Small Domains Using Covariates: A Comparison of Four Methods
- Nature’s contribution to poverty alleviation, human wellbeing and the SDGs
- Rural household energy transition in China: Trends and challenges
- Spatial modelling and inequalities of environmental noise in Accra, Ghana
- Environmental impacts of renting rangelands: integrating remote sensing and household surveys at the parcel level
- Identifying deprived “slum” neighbourhoods in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area of Ghana using census and remote sensing datal
- Phenotyping urban built and natural environments with high-resolution satellite images and unsupervised deep learning
- Strangers in a strange land: Mapping household and neighbourhood associations with improved wellbeing outcomes in Accra, Ghana
- Substitutability of natural and human capitals: lessons from a simple exploratory model
- Synthesizing the links between secure housing tenure and health for more equitable cities
- The application of semantic modelling to map pollination service provisioning at large landscape scales
- The limits of livelihood diversification and sustainable household well-being, evidence from China
- Strategy games to improve environmental policymaking
- Field measurements of indoor and community air quality in rural Beijing before, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown
- Impacts of agricultural commodity frontier expansion on smallholder livelihoods: An assessment through the lens of access to land and resources in the Argentine Chaco
- Land Tenure Security and Sustainable Development
- Property rights play a pivotal role in the distribution of ecosystem services among beneficiaries
- Quantifying within-city inequalities in child mortality across neighbourhoods in Accra, Ghana: a Bayesian spatial analysis
- Socioeconomic and Demographic Associations with Wintertime Air Pollution Exposures at Household, Community, and District Scales in Rural Beijing, China
- Spatial heterogeneity in drinking water sources in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), Ghana
- Quantifying the foodshed: a systematic review of urban food flow and local food self-sufficiency research
- Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs
- Increasing decision relevance of ecosystem service science
- Determining Freshwater Lake Communities’ Vulnerability to Snowstorms in the Northwest Territories
- Facing the challenges of using place-based social-ecological research to support ecosystem service governance at multiple scales
- Influence of land tenure interventions on human well-being and environmental outcomes
- Next steps for ecosystem service models: integrating complex interactions and beneficiaries
- Participatory Modeling of Water Vulnerability in Remote Alaskan Households Using Causal Loop Diagrams?
- Welcome to Wowchemy, the website builder for Hugo
- A factor-income approach to estimating grassland protection subsidy payments to livestock herders in Inner Mongolia, China
- A review of spatial targeting methods of payment for ecosystem services
- Geographic versus institutional drivers of nitrogen footprints: A comparison of two urban universities
- Household transitions to clean energy in a multiprovincial cohort study in China
- How do practitioners characterize land tenure security?
- Rural-urban connectivity and agricultural land management across the Global South
- The global forest transition as a human affair
- The impact of snowstorms, droughts and locust outbreaks on livestock in Inner Mongolia: anticipation and adaptation to environmental shocks
- Who is Vulnerable to Ecosystem Service Change? Reconciling Locally Disaggregated Ecosystem Service Supply and Demand
- Air Quality, Home Heating, and Well-Being under Beijing’s Ban on Household Coal Burning
- Aligning evidence generation and use across health, development, and environment
- An evaluation of air quality, home heating and well-being under Beijing’s programme to eliminate household coal use
- Disaggregating livelihood dependence on ecosystem services to inform land management
- Ecosystem service synergies/trade-offs informing the supply-demand match of ecosystem services: Framework and application
- Measuring what matters: actionable information for the landscape ecology of conservation biocontrol
- Realizing the values of natural capital for inclusive, sustainable development: Informing China’s new ecological development strategy
- Reimagining the potential of Earth observations for ecosystem service assessments
- Soil-targeted interventions could alleviate locust and grasshopper pest pressure in West Africa
- Telecoupled Sustainable Livelihoods in an Era of Rural–Urban Dynamics: The Case of China
- The ecological insurance trap
- Water Vulnerability in Arctic Households: A Literature-based Analysis
- What conditions are associated with household water vulnerability in the Arctic?
- How Do Capital Asset Interactions Affect Livelihood Sensitivity to Climatic Stresses? Insights From the Northeastern Floodplains of Bangladesh
- How do herders do well? Livestock grazing profitability potential in Inner Mongolia China across ecosystem types
- Incorporating Land Tenure Security into Conservation
- Livelihood exposure to climatic stresses in the north-eastern floodplains of Bangladesh
- Response to Kabisch and Colleagues
- Community land titles alone will not protect forests
- From Molecules to Management: Mechanisms and Consequences of Locust Phase Polyphenism”
- Household livelihood strategy choices, impact factors, and environmental consequences in Miyun reservoir watershed, China
- Institutional change in social-ecological systems: The evolution of grassland management in Inner Mongolia
- Nitrogen balance dynamic during 2000-2010 in the Yangtze River Basin croplands, with special reference to the relative contributions of arable area and synthetic fertilizer N application rate changes
- When, where, and how nature matters for ecosystem services: challenges for the next generation of ecosystem service models
- Using ecosystem service trade-offs to inform water conservation policies and management practices
- Conservation vs. livelihoods: spatial management of non-timber forest product harvests in a two-dimensional model
- Evolving frontier land markets and the opportunity cost of sparing forests in western Amazonia
- Meta-studies in land system science: current coverage and prospects”
- Living With Locusts: Connecting Soil Nitrogen, Locust Outbreaks, Livelihoods, and Livestock Markets
- Complex tenure and deforestation: Implications for conservation incentives in the Ecuadorian Amazon
- Does secure land tenure save forests? A meta-analysis of the relationship between land tenure and tropical deforestation
- Benefits, costs, and livelihood implications of a regional payment for ecosystem service program
- Managing wild resources: institutional choice and the recovery of resource rent in southwest China
- Understanding the Challenges and Rewards of Social-Ecological Research in China
- Are there spatial spillovers in the adoption of clean technology? The case of organic dairy farming
- Cultivating a demand for clean cookstoves
- Common and Privatized: Conditions for Wise Management of Matsutake Mushrooms in Northwest Yunnan Province, China