Board / Staff
Karin Limburg (President, 2006-07) -
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Karin is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science & Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She received her bachelor's degree at Vassar College (1977), master's degree in Systems Ecology under H.T. Odum at the University of Florida (1981), and a Ph.D. (1994) in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology under Simon Levin at Cornell University. Her research and teaching interests are varied and include fisheries ecology, otolith microchemistry, watershed ecology, and ecological economics. She is the lead author of a book on the Hudson River ecosystem and co-editor of a book on the biodiversity and conservation of shads, a fish group of considerable economic importance around the world, and coeditor of a special issue of Ecological Economics on the ecology of ecosystem services. She has authored papers in Nature, Ecology, Ecological Economics and other journals in the fields of ecological economics, ecology, fisheries science, and particle physics. She has been a Member-at-Large on the USSEE Board since 2003.
Sabine U. O’Hara (President-Elect, 2007)
Sabine O’Hara’s affiliation with Ecological Economics goes back to the 1990s, when she served on the ISEE Committee on Curriculum and Training, and later as a founding member of the USSEE. She is president of Roanoke College in Virginia, and continues to be a practitioner and advocate of Ecological Economics in her work as scholar, educator and administrator. Born and educated in Germany, she received her formal education at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where she earned a doctorate in environmental economics. Dr. O’Hara serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Social Economics, the editorial board of the Review of Social Economy, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Development Partnership and the Business Council; and just recently she completed a study on a quality of life based approach to development for the Roanoke region. As president elect, she will work to help position the USSEE to claim its timely and important leadership role in policy development at the national and international levels.
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Valerie A. Luzadis (Secretary-Treasurer, 2007 - 2008)
Valerie Luzadis, another founder of USSEE and former member-at-large, is Associate Professor of Ecological Economics and Natural Resources Policy, in the Faculty of Forestry and Natural Resources Management at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She received a BS degree from Cornell University (1983) in Forest Science, MS from Cornell (1990) in Forest Science and Communications, and PhD (1997) from SUNY ESF in Natural Resources Economics and Policy. She was introduced to ecological economics when she began her PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute under the advisement of John Gowdy. She brings strong practical experience and leadership in the forestry community to the academic world having worked as both Cooperative Extension Agent and Director of Communications and Education for the Empire State Forest Products Association, as well as having held local, state, and national leadership positions in the Society of American Foresters. At ESF, her research focuses on the relationships between social, economic, and ecological systems from the applied context of decision-making in small, rural communities to the global social, economic, and philosophical foundations that influence human interaction with ecosystems. In addition to teaching and research, she consults regularly with groups such as The Nature Conservancy and The Wildlife Conservation Society to advise and facilitate community-based conservation efforts.
Randy Bruins (At-Large Member, 2006-2007)
Randy Bruins is an environmental scientist in the U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both in zoology, from Miami University of Ohio and his Ph.D. in environmental science from Ohio State University. His dissertation examined methods for reducing flooding in central China through ecological strategies such as replacement of low-lying rice with native wetland crops. Since 1997 his EPA research has focused on methods for integrating ecological risk assessment and economic analysis. His 2005 book on this subject, Economics and Ecological Risk Assessment: Applications to Watershed Management (co-edited with Matthew Heberling) includes case studies in six watersheds, one coauthored by Karin Limburg and one by Jim Kahn. Randy is a coauthor of EPA’s draft strategy for measuring the benefits of ecosystem protection (the Ecological Benefits Assessment Strategic Plan). His current position is in EPA’s National Exposure Research Laboratory where he heads the Ecosystems Research Branch, a group that develops methods for monitoring the ecological condition of streams, rivers and wetlands.
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Robert Herendeen (At-Large Member, 2006-2007)
My two favorite EE issues are 1. rigorous and usable bookkeeping that reflects proactive consideration of scale, distribution, and efficiency in that order, as Herman Daly has said, 2. incorporating EE into education at the undergraduate college level. The latter is progressing reasonably and needs continued support. The former needs development in both theory (e.g., improvements in ecological footprint and other indicators of indirect, off-site impacts) and application (e.g., helping planners apply significant indicators). USSEE can promote these through symposia at the national meeting and contributing to a special issue of Ecological Economics. The USSEE newsletter is fairly moribund due to lack of submissions, indicating that members are very busy and/or need a swift kick or another oil crisis. I commit to applying the kick. My degrees are in physics (BS, Rensselaer; Ph.D., Cornell), and ever since grad school I have done resource analysis, particularly energy, in the U.S. and Norway. At the Illinois Natural History Survey/University of Illinois I do fish population modeling, systems ecology, resource analysis, and environmental planning. I teach "Ecological Numeracy" , and have written a book of the same title (http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~herendee/index.html ). I have been on the Editorial Board of Ecological Economics from the beginning, and welcome the opportunity to serve on the USSEE board.
Joshua Farley (Member-at-Large, 2007-08)
Josh Farley an Assistant Professor in Community Development and Public Administration and an associate of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics (GIEE) at the University of Vermont. He has a very interdisciplinary academic background, with degrees in biology, international affairs and neoclassical economics. The former degrees inoculated him against indoctrination in the latter. He returns to the USSEE board after a two-year hiatus. His major contributions to ecological economic include a textbook co-authored with Herman Daly (Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications), and an accompanying workbook on problem-based approaches to ecological economics co-authored with Jon Erickson and Herman Daly. He served as executive director of the UMD Institute for Ecological Economics, working with ISEE President-Elect Peter May to set up a workshop/field-course in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest assessing reforestation as a watershed management tool. At UVM he has collaborated with David Batker, Filipino NGOs and local Filipino government on a workshop/field-course studying the conversion of mangrove ecosystems to shrimp aquaculture in Palawan, Philippines. He is also involved in a number of local projects (several in collaboration with Bob Costanza), ranging from working with local government, businesses and NGOs and others to redesign and relaunch Burlington’s local complementary currency to working with the Vergennes planning commission to elicit from Vergennes' citizens a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable future.
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Trista Maj Patterson (Member-at-Large, 2007-08)
Trista Patterson is an ecological economist with the U.S. Forest Service. She has been a member of the Society since the ISEE meeting in Santiago, Chile in 1998. The insight, creativity, and energy from other ecological economists buoyed her own efforts throughout that year, and she has not missed a national or international meeting since. The doctoral and EE certificate program at the University of Maryland, a 3 year lecture/research residency at University of Siena, Italy in EE, and the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program (2004-2006), have also had a strong influence on her current work. She was an active student member, and now takes a place on the USSEE board. She sees the Society becoming increasingly important in 1) targeting aspects of those concepts that are getting lost in (mainstream) translation, 2) engaging with our ideal vision of the Society, that we make more of each gain, and 3) drawing others to our continued success.
Inês Lima de Azevedo (Student Member-at-Large, 2007-08)
Inês Lima de Azevedo is a PhD Student and Assistant Researcher at the Climate Decision Making Center and at the Carnegie Electricity Industry Center, in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy of Carnegie Mellon University. She has a B.S. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering (2004) as well as a Master’s degree in Engineering Policy and Management of Technology (2006) from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Portugal. In 2001 she received a scholarship fund to the study of flow material analysis for the Portuguese Economy, for the Mechanics Department of the IST, Lisbon, Portugal. She was in Denmark for an Erasmus Program in 2002, working mainly in European energy related issues. Her research interests are focused on policy problems in which environmental, economical, and technical issues as well as individual choices play a central role. Present application areas are the role of technological innovation and more efficient end-use technologies adoption by consumers on energy conservation and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. This includes questions as: are more efficient technologies enough to promote sustainable consumption and energy/material savings? Other research interests include: demand side energy policies; carbon trading and alternative schemes for carbon emissions reduction; models for energy demand; behavioral economics and consumer choices towards energy; carbon/energy reduction supply curves.
Policy Committee
Brian Czech, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Stephen DeCanio, University of California Washington Center
Neha Khanna, Binghamton University
Skip Laitner, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
*Richard Norgaard, University of California-Berkeley
Matthias Ruth, University of Maryland
David Stern, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
*USSEE representative to American Institute of Biological Sciences,
http://www.aibs.org/
Secretariat
Marsha Kopan
(414)453-0030
E-Mail
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