Azur Moulaert, MS

Azur.Moulaert@uvm.edu | 802-999-9905
Curriculum Vitae [PDF] | back to list

Azur Moulaert received a BS in Forest Engineering from the Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica (1992) and a Master's degree in Crop Science and Forestry from North Carolina State University (1996).

Azur's professional experience includes work as an environmental lobbyst, project manager, natural resource analyst, grassroots director and outreach coordinator. For more information view his summarized resume [PDF].

His role at the Institute is to oversee the completion of all aspects of our recent grant entitled: "Ecosystem Services: Dynamics, Modeling and Valuation to Promote Conservation" awarded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Various new social institutions are being developed to use information about the value of ecosystem services in order to better conserve them. For example, Costa Rica and other countries have systems of payments to individual landowners for the ecosystem services their land produces when maintained in a conserved, forested state.

What is needed now is a more sophisticated and transferable system to allow ecosystem managers to quickly understand the dynamics of ecosystem services in their area, how these are linked to human welfare, and how their function and value might change under various management scenarios. We also need better information on the dependence of various ecosystem services on the spatial pattern of land use and the scaling of information on local ecosystem services to watershed, national, and global scales.

This project integrates participatory modeling, data collection, valuation, and outreach that will take the study of ecosystem services to the next level and allow the results to be effectively used in a number of critical environmental management contexts. Read full proposal [PDF].

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