Kathleen E. Halvorsen

- Professor of Natural Resource Policy, SFRES
- Joint Appointment in Social Sciences and SFRES
- PhD, Forest Resource Management, University of Washington
- MS, Environmental Science, State University of New York
- BS, Political Economy of Natural Resources, University of California at Berkeley
Natural Resource Policy
I have a joint appointment with the Department of Social Sciences and the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. As part of the Environmental and Energy Policy Graduate Program, I teach SS5300 Environmental and Natural Resource Policy.
I currently have two main research foci: climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection. I am studying climate mitigation through energy conservation with a new NSF INFEWS grant focused on the United States and the Netherlands. We have a new project establishing a network around socioecological impacts of Arctic permafrost losses entitled "Convergence NNA: Coordinate a Transdisciplinary Research Network to Identify Challenges of and Solutions to Permafrost Coastal Erosion and Its Socioecological Impacts in the Arctic."I also lead a large, international, transdisciplinary group of researchers studying the impacts of forest-related bioenergy across the Americas that is funded by, among other sources, NSF PIRE and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) CRN3 programs. One dimension of this project is the study of impacts on biodiversity which is an area of research that I will increasingly focus on over the next few years.
I served on the 2010-11 National Academy of Science's Committee on the Economic and Environmental Impacts of Increasing Biofuels and you can download our report as a free pdf here.
My research projects and supervision of graduate students are very transdisciplinary. I have the pleasure of working with a wide variety of social, natural, and applied (engineering) scientists across Europe, China, and North and South America. I have also taught about and studied the acquisition of transdisciplinary scientific teamwork skills.
On a more personal level, I love to spend time searching for cool rocks and mushrooms, hiking, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, knitting, and spending time with my dogs.
Links of Interest
- Environmental and Energy Policy Program
- Ecosystem Science Center
- International Association of Society and Natural Resources
- Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research
- Sustainability, Ecosystem Services, and Forest-related Bioenergy Development across the Americas
- Society for Conservation Biology Social Science Working Group
Areas of Expertise
- Woody bioenergy
- Climate change
- Natural resource policy
- Biodiversity policy
- Bioenergy policy