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clmonfreda@wisc.edu Chad is a master’s degree student in Land Resources interested in integrating human dimensions into ecological science. As a SAGE research assistant, his work follows two tracks. The first is the construction of global datasets on the area and yield of key crops. These datasets will be used as inputs for terrestrial ecosystem models in order to capture the effect of land-use on ecosystem services like food, fiber, and freshwater. Ecosystem models create the output for the second track, which aims to advance conceptual frameworks of ecosystem service tradeoffs into analytical tools capable of quantifying such tradeoffs. Chad’s project specifically looks at the tradeoffs agriculture creates between carbon storage, water quality, and food production in the Mississippi Basin. The hope is that new frameworks like this will provide the sophistication and synthetic perspective needed to balance competing demands for ecosystem services across multiple scales. Chad earned an undergraduate degree in environmental science with a concentration in GIS at Boston University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, where he graduated summa cum laude in 2000. He spent the junior year of his undergraduate studies traveling across four continents with the International Honors Program. Learning firsthand about the challenges of a globalizing world impressed him with the need for interdisciplinary research bridging the natural and social sciences. After leaving Boston University, Chad went on to intern at YES! Magazine in Seattle for three months before moving to Oakland to work as a research associate at Redefining Progress, a think-tank in promoting sustainability in public policy. There he focused on creating a system for calculating national Ecological Footprint accounts. While pursuing academic research he also maintains work on the footprint, believing in the importance of scientific communication and outreach.
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