RFF Awarded Grant for Predictive Modeling of Natural Resource Systems

WASHINGTON—Resources for the Future’s (RFF’s) Land, Water, and Nature program has been awarded a $2.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation-funded National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) to support advances in the predictive modeling of natural resource systems.

According to RFF President Richard Newell, “We deeply appreciate this important support for work that will benefit diverse communities with a stake in our environmental future. Predictive models require diverse expertise. The grant will allow Resources for the Future to involve experts from fields including hydrology, biology, engineering, landscape ecology, anthropology, as well as economics. It will also allow us to involve stakeholders interested in the predictions these models will generate, including land owners; businesses that rely on clean, abundant water; fishing communities; and agencies and NGOs with environmental stewardship missions.”

With this grant, RFF will collaboratively develop models that couple the dynamic aspects of both ecological and economic systems. Social and economic behavior is affected by environmental conditions such as the scarcity of water, water quality, species abundance and habitats, and forest and rangeland features. In turn, the behavior of ecological systems is affected by social and economic behavior. Thus, our ability to predict ecological and economic change hinges on an ability to deploy models that feature interactions between economic and ecological systems.

“For decades RFF has been at the forefront of collaborations between ecology and economics,” says RFF Senior Fellow James Boyd, who will lead the project. “The fields of ecology and economics are poised to make significant advances in our ability to predict environmental change and thereby make better policy decisions.”