Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

About the PNAS Member Editor
Name Polasky, Stephen
Location University of Minnesota
Primary Field Human Environmental Sciences
Secondary Field Economic Sciences
 Election Citation
Polasky has shown that integrated economic and ecological analyses are required to understand human and environmental systems. His research on the costs and tradeoffs of ecosystem services, corn-based bio-fuels, and land use has important implications for public policy.
 Research Interests
My research integrates ecology and economics to analyze the spatial pattern and value of ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and other objectives that affect human well-being, and analyzes how these objectives are impacted by various human decisions on land use, resource use, energy production, and food production. This research incorporates how human actions affect ecosystems, the effect that changes in ecosystem structure and function have on the provision of ecosystem services and biodiversity, the values of these services in terms of changes in human well-being, and the impact of various policies and incentive mechanisms that can influence decisions. The aim of this research is to accurately measure the consequences of alternative decisions and to link these measures to incentives to provide better decisions and improved outcomes. I have applied similar integrated ecological and economic analysis to assess the full-cost of production and use of biofuels versus conventional fossil-fuels that includes the costs of greenhouse gas emissions and emissions leading to air and water pollution, setting conservation priorities by calculating a return on investment that maximizes biodiversity conservation per dollar spent on conservation, the relative effectiveness of alternative environmental and conservation policies mechanisms, and sustainability analysis of long-run impacts from current decisions.

 
These pages are for the use of PNAS Editorial Board members and authors searching for PNAS member editors. For information about the National Academy of Sciences or its membership, please see http://www.nasonline.org.
National Academy of Sciences | Copyright ©2025, All Rights Reserved