Prof. L. Roman Carrasco
Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Department (Research)
National University of Singapore
I completed my PhD in spatial bioeconomic modelling at Imperial College London in 2010. In 2012, I joined the Department of Biological Sciences of NUS and was appointed Associate Professor in 2019. My research develops spatial models that combine ecology and economics to identify sustainable solutions that reconcile economic development with tropical biodiversity conservation.
My research focuses on drivers of tropical deforestation and biodiversity loss. My group has focuses on land-use change modeling in the tropics, the trade-offs between agricultural production and ecosystem services from forests, protected area effectiveness, and valuation of benefits provided by tropical forests (spanning from mental health to carbon sequestration). My latest research focuses on the identification of sustainable diets that are affordable and attractive to consumers and the role of businesses in financing nature conservation.
Research Areas
- Conservation science
- Ecological economics
- Sustainability science
- Land use change
- Environmental health
Research Interests
The main research focus of the Bioecon lab gravitates around sustainability. The lab aims at identifying strategies for the reconciliation of biodiversity conservation, food security and economic development in the tropics. The research developed in the lab deals with the complex interactions occurring in tropical socio-ecological systems. This complexity requires an interdisciplinary approach where biological models are linked to economics through bioeconomic modeling. Specific research topics of the lab are: tropical forests conservation, trade-offs between agriculture and ecosystem services and benefits to humans from nature. The lab is applied and quantitative. A wide range of mathematical, computational and statistical modeling approaches, many of which have a spatial component, are employed. Please send me an email if you would like to collaborate or be part of the lab. .
Selected Publications
- S.H.S. Teoh, W.S. Symes, H. Sun, T. Pienkowski, L.R. Carrasco (2019) A global meta-analysis of the economic values of provisioning and cultural ecosystem services. Science of The Total Environment 649, 1293-1298.Symes W.S., Edwards D.P., Miettinen J., Rheindt F.E., Carrasco L.R. (2018) Biodiversity conservation assessments underestimate the combined threats posed by tropical land-use change and wildlife trade. Nature communications. 9 (1) 4052.
- T. Pienkowski, B.L. Dickens, H. Sun, L.R. Carrasco (2018) Empirical evidence of the public health benefits of tropical forest conservation in Cambodia: a generalised linear mixed-effects model analysis. The Lancet Planetary Health. 1: 5, e180-e187.
- L.R. Carrasco, J. Chan, F.L. McGrath, T.P.L. Nghiem (2018) Biodiversity conservation in a telecoupled world. Ecology and Society. 22 (3).
- L.R. Carrasco, E.L. Webb, W.S. Symes, L.P. Koh, N.S. Sodhi (2017) Global economic trade-offs between wild nature and tropical agriculture. PLOS Biology 15(7): e2001657. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001657.
