Juan P. Alvez Juan.Alvez@uvm.edu Associate Research Professor Relationship with MIMES: Curriculum Vitae |
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Juan Pablo Alvez is an agronomist with emphasis in sustainable farming. He comes from a beef and sheep family farm in Rivera, north of Uruguay. He arrived in the US in 2003 to start his Masters degree at the Plant and Soil Sciences Department, University of Vermont, which he completed in 2005. Admitted as a Ph.D. student to the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources/Gund Institute in 2006, Juan has been working on the bioregulation model, researching the carbon fluxes in ecosystems under the Moore Foundation Grant’s MIMES Project, and lately working on the outreach and website program of the same project.
In addition to working under the Moore Foundation Grant (MIMES Project), Juan actively collaborates with other projects at the Gund, such as the organization of the Costa Rican atelier under the Bluemoon Foundation Grant in March of 2007. He actively worked on the fundamentals and brainstorming of the “Declaration of Heredia on Payments for Ecosystem Services”.
Juan also worked to calculate the Costa Rican atelier’s carbon footprint where it was possible to determine the emissions by participant and by three tier activities. Furthermore, upon presenting the results in class, it was decided to offset the carbon dioxide emissions by investing in Costa Rican forests for a five-year period. At the same atelier, he co-authored a paper to undertake study of the problem of implementing a National Payments for Ecosystem Services Policy in Brazil. The paper was submitted in July of 2007 to the Ecological Economics Journal.
Among his academic achievements, Juan is pursuing both the Ecological Economics and Ecological Design (still under review) Certificates. To date he has completed most of the required courses for both Certificates.
His dissertation interest is focused on sustainable farming in relationship to ecosystem functions and services, particularly the energy and the carbon sequestration comparison of grazing methods.
Since 2003, Juan and his wife, Ursula, have run a volunteering program called “Free Box” in the community where they live. The program consists of making people aware of responsible consumption, waste reduction, re-using and recycling valuable things.
