Casey M Ryan
Biographic Data
| ID | 145976 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Casey M Ryan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Casey M |
| FAMILY NAME | Ryan |
| SIGNATURE | RYAN C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0660-3588 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 117 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Does knowledge co-production influence adaptive capacity
Climate change impacts vary depending on social and biophysical vulnerabilities, and the ability of society to respond, resist, or adapt to change/stress (i.e. adaptive capacity). In the field of climate science, funding for applied and engaged research is growing rapidly. Variously termed ‘knowledge co-production,’ ‘collaborative,’ ‘convergent,’ or ‘transdisciplinary’ research is hoped to improve outcomes in complex and dynamic social-ecological…
Resilience, remoteness and war shape the land cover dynamics in one of the world's largest miombo woodlands
The highlands of southeast Angola are one of the world's largest intact formations of miombo woodland. Recent interest from conservation groups is increasing the possibility of a new protected area in this conflict-afflicted, remote region, contributing to the “30 × 30” target of the Global Biodiversity Framework. With the potential for a new protected area, it is important to quantify the extent and change of natural and anthropogenic land cover…
How Social Considerations Improve the Equity and Effectiveness of Ecosystem Restoration
Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studie…
Hundreds of millions of people in the tropics need both wild harvests and other forms of economic development for their well-being
of millions of people in the tropics harvest ''wild'' common-pool resources d Wild harvests are correlated with high relative well-being in remote and poor areas d Access to infrastructure, cities, assets, and skills also increase well-being overall d The well-being of many people relies on both wild resources and economic development
Understanding livelihood changes in the charcoal and baobab value chains during Covid-19 in rural Mozambique
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce the transmission of Covid-19 had different repercussions for domestic, regional and global value chains, but empirical data are sparse on specific dynamics, particularly on their implications for value-chain stakeholders' local livelihoods. Through research including weekly phone interviews (n = 273 from May to July 2020) with panellists in six Mozambican communities, our research traced firstly h…
Ten facts about land systems for sustainability
Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in la…
The Role of Forests and Trees in Poverty Dynamics
Ecosystem Service Provision by Secondary Forests in Shifting Cultivation Areas Remains Poorly Understood
Aboveground forest biomass varies across continents, ecological zones and successional stages
For monitoring and reporting forest carbon stocks and fluxes, many countries in the tropics and subtropics rely on default values of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories. Default IPCC forest AGB values originated from 2006, and are relatively crude estimates of average values per continent and ecological zone. The 2006 default values wer…
To prevent this disease, we have to stay at home, but if we stay at home, we die of hunger’ – Livelihoods, vulnerability and coping with Covid-19 in rural Mozambique
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and travel restrictions have been introduced to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus (hereinafter Covid). In many countries of the Global South, NPIs are affecting rural livelihoods, but in-depth empirical data on these impacts are limited. We traced the differentiated impacts of Covid NPIs throughout the start of the pandemic May to July 2020. We conducted qualitative weekl…
Social as much as environmental
A major challenge for forest landscape restoration initiatives is the lack of quantitative evidence on how social factors drive environmental outcomes. Here we conduct an interdisciplinary quantitative analysis of the environmental and social drivers of tree biomass accumulation across 639 smallholder farms restoring native tree species in Mexico, Uganda and Mozambique. We use environmental and social data to assess the relative effects of key hy…
In defence of simplified PES designs
Fieldwork Under Surveillance
Encounters with the surveillance state during fieldwork are common, raising practical and intellectual challenges for qualitative research methods. Despite a number of studies on this topic, surveillance in illiberal and liberal contexts tend to be treated as separate problems. We provide a comparative case study that addresses the impacts of surveillance on sensitive research topics in the relatively weak state of Kyrgyzstan and the stronger sta…
Forgone opportunities of large-scale agricultural investment
Impacts of land use intensification on human wellbeing
Environmental resources as ‘last resort’ coping strategies following harvest failures in Zimbabwe
Environmental resources are often cited as important for households coping with hazards in the Global South. However, a recent large-scale analysis has challenged the narrative of ‘forest as safety net’. Clarifying this contradiction is important given the anticipated increase in the frequency of severe hazards due to climate change, and also because calls for habitat restoration may drive transformation of resource access in tropical landscapes.…
Environmental incomes sustained as provisioning ecosystem service availability declines along a woodland resource gradient in Zimbabwe
Forest and woodland resources can play a key role in rural livelihoods in the Global South, making it critical to understand what forest change could mean for rural wellbeing. Calculating environmental income has become a popular method of highlighting the importance of environmental resources in livelihoods, but few studies have quantified both provisioning ecosystem service availability and environmental income in the same landscape, or disaggr…
Social-ecological outcomes of agricultural intensification
Urban energy transitions and rural income generation
Sub-Saharan Africa’s charcoal sector is rarely considered a mechanism for rural development or poverty alleviation; instead, current regulations often marginalise rural producers. The development of a sustainable sector, that does not further marginalise rural populations, is restricted by limited understanding of these stakeholders. We assess the heterogeneity of rural producers supplying two differentially sized urban charcoal markets in Mozamb…
Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity and Rural Livelihoods
The African land system is undergoing rapid change, and novel approaches are needed to understand the drivers and consequences of land use intensification. Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) is a powerful indicator of land use intensity, but has rarely been calculated at high spatial resolutions. Based on data from six villages in Zimbabwe, we present a novel method of calculating HANPP at community and household scales, and …
Environmental Conservation and Social Benefits of Charcoal Production in Mozambique
Charcoal is an important source of energy and income for millions of people in Africa. Its production often drives forest degradation and deforestation which have impacts on the local people that remain poorly understood. We present a novel methodology for analysing the contribution of woodland ecosystem services (ES) to rural well-being and poverty alleviation, which takes into account access mechanisms to ES, trade-offs between ES, and human re…
Rethinking Monitoring in Smallholder Carbon Payments for Ecosystem Service Schemes
Improved allometric models to estimate the aboveground biomass of tropical trees
Terrestrial carbon stock mapping is important for the successful implementation of climate change mitigation policies. Its accuracy depends on the availability of reliable allometric models to infer oven‐dry aboveground biomass of trees from census data. The degree of uncertainty associated with previously published pantropical aboveground biomass allometries is large. We analyzed a global database of directly harvested trees at 58 sites, spannin…
Overcoming the risk of inaction from emissions uncertainty in smallholder agriculture
The potential for improving productivity and increasing the resilience of smallholder agriculture, while also contributing to climate change mitigation, has recently received considerable political attention (Beddington et al 2012). Financial support for improving smallholder agriculture could come from performance-based funding including sale of carbon credits or certified commodities, payments for ecosystem services, and nationally appropriate …
The forgotten D
International climate negotiations have stressed the importance of considering emissions from forest degradation under the planned REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation + enhancing forest carbon stocks) mechanism. However, most research, pilot-REDD+ projects and carbon certification agencies have focused on deforestation and there appears to be a gap in knowledge on complex mosaic landscapes containing degraded fores…
Social-ecological outcomes of agricultural intensification
The Role of Forests and Trees in Poverty Dynamics
The forgotten D
International climate negotiations have stressed the importance of considering emissions from forest degradation under the planned REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation + enhancing forest carbon stocks) mechanism. However, most research, pilot-REDD+ projects and carbon certification agencies have focused on deforestation and there appears to be a gap in knowledge on complex mosaic landscapes containing degraded fores…
Fieldwork Under Surveillance
Encounters with the surveillance state during fieldwork are common, raising practical and intellectual challenges for qualitative research methods. Despite a number of studies on this topic, surveillance in illiberal and liberal contexts tend to be treated as separate problems. We provide a comparative case study that addresses the impacts of surveillance on sensitive research topics in the relatively weak state of Kyrgyzstan and the stronger sta…
Impacts of land use intensification on human wellbeing
Environmental resources as ‘last resort’ coping strategies following harvest failures in Zimbabwe
Environmental resources are often cited as important for households coping with hazards in the Global South. However, a recent large-scale analysis has challenged the narrative of ‘forest as safety net’. Clarifying this contradiction is important given the anticipated increase in the frequency of severe hazards due to climate change, and also because calls for habitat restoration may drive transformation of resource access in tropical landscapes.…
Urban energy transitions and rural income generation
Sub-Saharan Africa’s charcoal sector is rarely considered a mechanism for rural development or poverty alleviation; instead, current regulations often marginalise rural producers. The development of a sustainable sector, that does not further marginalise rural populations, is restricted by limited understanding of these stakeholders. We assess the heterogeneity of rural producers supplying two differentially sized urban charcoal markets in Mozamb…
To prevent this disease, we have to stay at home, but if we stay at home, we die of hunger’ – Livelihoods, vulnerability and coping with Covid-19 in rural Mozambique
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and travel restrictions have been introduced to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus (hereinafter Covid). In many countries of the Global South, NPIs are affecting rural livelihoods, but in-depth empirical data on these impacts are limited. We traced the differentiated impacts of Covid NPIs throughout the start of the pandemic May to July 2020. We conducted qualitative weekl…
Environmental incomes sustained as provisioning ecosystem service availability declines along a woodland resource gradient in Zimbabwe
Forest and woodland resources can play a key role in rural livelihoods in the Global South, making it critical to understand what forest change could mean for rural wellbeing. Calculating environmental income has become a popular method of highlighting the importance of environmental resources in livelihoods, but few studies have quantified both provisioning ecosystem service availability and environmental income in the same landscape, or disaggr…
Environmental Conservation and Social Benefits of Charcoal Production in Mozambique
Charcoal is an important source of energy and income for millions of people in Africa. Its production often drives forest degradation and deforestation which have impacts on the local people that remain poorly understood. We present a novel methodology for analysing the contribution of woodland ecosystem services (ES) to rural well-being and poverty alleviation, which takes into account access mechanisms to ES, trade-offs between ES, and human re…
Rethinking Monitoring in Smallholder Carbon Payments for Ecosystem Service Schemes
Understanding livelihood changes in the charcoal and baobab value chains during Covid-19 in rural Mozambique
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce the transmission of Covid-19 had different repercussions for domestic, regional and global value chains, but empirical data are sparse on specific dynamics, particularly on their implications for value-chain stakeholders' local livelihoods. Through research including weekly phone interviews (n = 273 from May to July 2020) with panellists in six Mozambican communities, our research traced firstly h…
In defence of simplified PES designs
Forgone opportunities of large-scale agricultural investment
The forgotten D
International climate negotiations have stressed the importance of considering emissions from forest degradation under the planned REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation + enhancing forest carbon stocks) mechanism. However, most research, pilot-REDD+ projects and carbon certification agencies have focused on deforestation and there appears to be a gap in knowledge on complex mosaic landscapes containing degraded fores…
Overcoming the risk of inaction from emissions uncertainty in smallholder agriculture
The potential for improving productivity and increasing the resilience of smallholder agriculture, while also contributing to climate change mitigation, has recently received considerable political attention (Beddington et al 2012). Financial support for improving smallholder agriculture could come from performance-based funding including sale of carbon credits or certified commodities, payments for ecosystem services, and nationally appropriate …
Improved allometric models to estimate the aboveground biomass of tropical trees
Terrestrial carbon stock mapping is important for the successful implementation of climate change mitigation policies. Its accuracy depends on the availability of reliable allometric models to infer oven‐dry aboveground biomass of trees from census data. The degree of uncertainty associated with previously published pantropical aboveground biomass allometries is large. We analyzed a global database of directly harvested trees at 58 sites, spannin…
Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity and Rural Livelihoods
The African land system is undergoing rapid change, and novel approaches are needed to understand the drivers and consequences of land use intensification. Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP) is a powerful indicator of land use intensity, but has rarely been calculated at high spatial resolutions. Based on data from six villages in Zimbabwe, we present a novel method of calculating HANPP at community and household scales, and …
Environmental Conservation and Social Benefits of Charcoal Production in Mozambique
Charcoal is an important source of energy and income for millions of people in Africa. Its production often drives forest degradation and deforestation which have impacts on the local people that remain poorly understood. We present a novel methodology for analysing the contribution of woodland ecosystem services (ES) to rural well-being and poverty alleviation, which takes into account access mechanisms to ES, trade-offs between ES, and human re…
Rethinking Monitoring in Smallholder Carbon Payments for Ecosystem Service Schemes
Social-ecological outcomes of agricultural intensification
Urban energy transitions and rural income generation
Sub-Saharan Africa’s charcoal sector is rarely considered a mechanism for rural development or poverty alleviation; instead, current regulations often marginalise rural producers. The development of a sustainable sector, that does not further marginalise rural populations, is restricted by limited understanding of these stakeholders. We assess the heterogeneity of rural producers supplying two differentially sized urban charcoal markets in Mozamb…
Forgone opportunities of large-scale agricultural investment
Impacts of land use intensification on human wellbeing
Environmental resources as ‘last resort’ coping strategies following harvest failures in Zimbabwe
Environmental resources are often cited as important for households coping with hazards in the Global South. However, a recent large-scale analysis has challenged the narrative of ‘forest as safety net’. Clarifying this contradiction is important given the anticipated increase in the frequency of severe hazards due to climate change, and also because calls for habitat restoration may drive transformation of resource access in tropical landscapes.…
Environmental incomes sustained as provisioning ecosystem service availability declines along a woodland resource gradient in Zimbabwe
Forest and woodland resources can play a key role in rural livelihoods in the Global South, making it critical to understand what forest change could mean for rural wellbeing. Calculating environmental income has become a popular method of highlighting the importance of environmental resources in livelihoods, but few studies have quantified both provisioning ecosystem service availability and environmental income in the same landscape, or disaggr…
Social as much as environmental
A major challenge for forest landscape restoration initiatives is the lack of quantitative evidence on how social factors drive environmental outcomes. Here we conduct an interdisciplinary quantitative analysis of the environmental and social drivers of tree biomass accumulation across 639 smallholder farms restoring native tree species in Mexico, Uganda and Mozambique. We use environmental and social data to assess the relative effects of key hy…
In defence of simplified PES designs
Fieldwork Under Surveillance
Encounters with the surveillance state during fieldwork are common, raising practical and intellectual challenges for qualitative research methods. Despite a number of studies on this topic, surveillance in illiberal and liberal contexts tend to be treated as separate problems. We provide a comparative case study that addresses the impacts of surveillance on sensitive research topics in the relatively weak state of Kyrgyzstan and the stronger sta…
Ecosystem Service Provision by Secondary Forests in Shifting Cultivation Areas Remains Poorly Understood
Aboveground forest biomass varies across continents, ecological zones and successional stages
For monitoring and reporting forest carbon stocks and fluxes, many countries in the tropics and subtropics rely on default values of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories. Default IPCC forest AGB values originated from 2006, and are relatively crude estimates of average values per continent and ecological zone. The 2006 default values wer…
To prevent this disease, we have to stay at home, but if we stay at home, we die of hunger’ – Livelihoods, vulnerability and coping with Covid-19 in rural Mozambique
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing and travel restrictions have been introduced to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus (hereinafter Covid). In many countries of the Global South, NPIs are affecting rural livelihoods, but in-depth empirical data on these impacts are limited. We traced the differentiated impacts of Covid NPIs throughout the start of the pandemic May to July 2020. We conducted qualitative weekl…
Ten facts about land systems for sustainability
Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in la…
The Role of Forests and Trees in Poverty Dynamics
How Social Considerations Improve the Equity and Effectiveness of Ecosystem Restoration
Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studie…
Hundreds of millions of people in the tropics need both wild harvests and other forms of economic development for their well-being
of millions of people in the tropics harvest ''wild'' common-pool resources d Wild harvests are correlated with high relative well-being in remote and poor areas d Access to infrastructure, cities, assets, and skills also increase well-being overall d The well-being of many people relies on both wild resources and economic development
Understanding livelihood changes in the charcoal and baobab value chains during Covid-19 in rural Mozambique
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce the transmission of Covid-19 had different repercussions for domestic, regional and global value chains, but empirical data are sparse on specific dynamics, particularly on their implications for value-chain stakeholders' local livelihoods. Through research including weekly phone interviews (n = 273 from May to July 2020) with panellists in six Mozambican communities, our research traced firstly h…
Resilience, remoteness and war shape the land cover dynamics in one of the world's largest miombo woodlands
The highlands of southeast Angola are one of the world's largest intact formations of miombo woodland. Recent interest from conservation groups is increasing the possibility of a new protected area in this conflict-afflicted, remote region, contributing to the “30 × 30” target of the Global Biodiversity Framework. With the potential for a new protected area, it is important to quantify the extent and change of natural and anthropogenic land cover…
Does knowledge co-production influence adaptive capacity
Climate change impacts vary depending on social and biophysical vulnerabilities, and the ability of society to respond, resist, or adapt to change/stress (i.e. adaptive capacity). In the field of climate science, funding for applied and engaged research is growing rapidly. Variously termed ‘knowledge co-production,’ ‘collaborative,’ ‘convergent,’ or ‘transdisciplinary’ research is hoped to improve outcomes in complex and dynamic social-ecological…
Geography (19 works) · Economics (17 works) · Business (16 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (15 works) · Agriculture (14 works) · Ecology (13 works) · Environmental resource management (13 works) · Land Use and Ecosystem Services (13 works) · Natural resource economics (13 works) · Environmental Science (11 works)