Kenneth Bagstad, Ph.D.

Kenneth.Bagstad@uvm.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Ken is a post-doctoral associate working as the project economist for the joint U.S. Geological Survey-Bureau of Land Management Ecosystem Services Valuation Pilot. For this work, Ken is evaluating alternative tools to assess and value ecosystem services using monetary and non-monetary methods. This work is focused on the San Pedro River, in southeast Arizona, and has the long-term goal of determining how to use bring ecosystem services concepts into the field of public land management. Ken also serves as the lead modeler for the NSF-funded Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES) project, which is building a series of web-accessible tools to map, assess, and value ecosystem services for environmental decision-making.

In 2009, Ken completed his dissertation “Ecological economic applications for urban and regional sustainability.” His Ph.D. work spanned several themes in ecological economics, including the science, economics, and policy of ecosystem services, use of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) at local scales in Vermont and Ohio, and the effects of tax and subsidy policies on coastal development patterns.

Ken received a B.A. in botany and environmental studies from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1999, and his M.S. from Arizona State University in 2002. For his Master's research, he studied the conflicts between groundwater pumping and ecosystem health of the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona, focusing specifically on riparian plant communities. He has also studied tropical plant taxonomy in Central and South America. Following his Master’s work, Ken worked as an environmental consultant in Chicago, Illinois, and was active in restoration of native wetland, prairie, and savanna ecosystems in the Midwestern U.S. Ken has also assisted in ecosystem service valuation studies for Louisiana, Washington State, and Ontario, advised researchers working on GPI studies for Michigan and Utah, and explored markets and ecosystem service-based funding mechanisms for ecological restoration in Illinois and Washington State.

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