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| Name |
Bennett, Elena M. |
| Location
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McGill University |
| Primary Field
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Environmental Sciences and Ecology |
| Secondary Field
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Human Environmental Sciences |
 Election Citation
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Bennett designs new approaches to measure, map, and model interconnected ecosystem services at multiple scales to ensure their long-term sustainability. |
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Research Interests
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Research in the Bennett lab centers around questions about ecosystem services, the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. People have always depended on the services provided by ecosystems, including products such as food and freshwater; non-material benefits such as places for recreation and inspiration; and benefits obtained by regulation of ecosystem processes, such as flood control and climate regulation. A growing body of evidence indicates that most ecosystem management, which attempts to maximize one ecosystem service (ES) at a time, actually makes ecosystems vulnerable to substantial declines in other services or to increased likelihood of nonlinear, surprising changes in the provision of services. For this reason, recent studies have called for increased attention to managing multiple ES together. However, effective management of multiple ES is impeded by inadequate understanding of the interactions among ES and the slowly changing variables that appear to regulate these interactions. Research in the Bennett lab focuses on how different types of ecosystem services interact across the landscape over long time periods, and how we can manage landscapes to provide multiple ecosystem services. Current research topics include management for multifunctional landscapes, pathways to social-ecological transformations, and scenarios for thinking (and talking) about social-ecological futures. |
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