K M Carlson
Biographic Data
| ID | 50014 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K M Carlson |
| GIVEN NAMES | K M |
| FAMILY NAME | Carlson |
| SIGNATURE | CARLSON K M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2162-1378 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 73 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Long-standing labour migration, new plantation enclosures, and social reproduction in Indonesian Borneo’s borderlands
Smallholder participation in zero-deforestation supply chain initiatives in the Indonesian palm oil sector: Challenges, opportunities, and limitations
As actors in tropical agricultural commodity supply chains implement commitments to end deforestation, they risk exacerbating social inequities by excluding smallholder farmers, who are important producers of many tropical commodity crops. Here, we explore the potential for independent oil palm smallholders in Indonesia to participate in zero-deforestation supply chains. We find that these smallholders are underrepresented in the share of zero-de…
How well does the implementation of corporate zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia align with aims to halt deforestation and include smallholders
In response to growing scrutiny surrounding commodity-driven deforestation, companies have introduced zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) with ambitious environmental and social targets. However, such initiatives may not effectively reduce deforestation if they are not aligned with the spatial extent of remaining forests at risk. They may also fail to avert socio-economic risks if ZDCs do not consider smallholder farmers’ needs. We assess the s…
The role of third-party audits in ensuring producer compliance with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification system
Certification systems for sustainable agricultural commodities typically rely on auditors to verify that producers comply with environmental, social, and legal standards. In the oil palm industry, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification system promises to address core sectoral sustainability concerns—including deforestation, fire, biodiversity loss, peatland drainage, forced labor, and land tenure conflict—by applying third-pa…
Gaps in adoption and implementation limit the current and potential effectiveness of zero-deforestation supply chain policies for soy
Tropical deforestation continues despite global efforts to curb forest loss. Corporate zero-deforestation supply chain commitments (ZDCs) have the potential to address this deforestation, especially if strong state-led forest governance is absent. Yet, because ZDC adoption is limited to particular locations and supply chains, these commitments may fall short at reducing regional deforestation and protecting biodiverse ecosystems. Here, we leverag…
Global rainbow distribution under current and future climates
Rainbows contribute to human wellbeing by providing an inspiring connection to nature. Because the rainbow is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that results from the refraction of sunlight by rainwater droplets, changes in precipitation and cloud cover due to anthropogenic climate forcing will alter rainbow distribution. Yet, we lack a basic understanding of the current spatial distribution of rainbows and how climate change might alter this patt…
The Global Methane Budget 2000–2017
Understanding and quantifying the global methane (CH4) budget is important for assessing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. Atmospheric emissions and concentrations of CH4 continue to increase, making CH4 the second most important human-influenced greenhouse gas in terms of climate forcing, after carbon dioxide (CO2). The relative importance of CH4 compared to CO2 depends on its shorter atmospheric lifetime, stronger warming potential…
Does oil palm certification create trade-offs between environment and development in Indonesia
Environmental and social problems triggered by rapid palm oil expansion in the tropics have spurred the proliferation of sustainability certification systems such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). While the RSPO aims to improve the impact of oil palm production on people and environments, its effect on local development, environmental quality, and, especially, potential trade-offs between these outcomes remain unclear. Here, we ev…
Deforestation spillovers from oil palm sustainability certification
Environmental policies that impose restrictions within one location may be undermined or reinforced by ‘spillover effects,’ the movement of actors, processes, or knowledge to other locations. Such spillovers are an important consideration in the design of interventions seeking to reduce commodity driven deforestation. In these settings, global markets and mobile actors can move deforestation and conservation behaviors over large distances, compli…
Impact of palm oil sustainability certification on village well-being and poverty in Indonesia
Circular labor migration and land-livelihood dynamics in Southeast Asia's concession landscapes
Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits
Effect of oil palm sustainability certification on deforestation and fire in Indonesia
Significance Demand for agricultural commodities is the leading driver of tropical deforestation. Many corporations have pledged to eliminate forest loss from their supply chains by purchasing only certified “sustainable” products. To evaluate whether certification fulfills such pledges, we applied statistical analyses to satellite-based estimates of tree cover loss to infer the causal impact of a third-party certification system on deforestation…
Balancing tradeoffs: Reconciling multiple environmental goals when ecosystem services vary regionally
As the planet’s dominant land use, agriculture often competes with the preservation of natural systems that provide globally and regionally important ecosystem services. How agriculture impacts ecosystem service delivery varies regionally, among services being considered, and across spatial scales. Here, we assess the tradeoffs between four ecosystem services—agricultural production, carbon storage, biophysical climate regulation, and biodiversit…
Progress towards sustainable intensification in China challenged by land-use change
Criteria for effective zero-deforestation commitments
Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effec…
Biomass burning drives atmospheric nutrient redistribution within forested peatlands in Borneo
Biomass burning plays a critical role not only in atmospheric emissions, but also in the deposition and redistribution of biologically important nutrients within tropical landscapes. We quantified the influence of fire on biogeochemical fluxes of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S) in a 12 ha forested peatland in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Total (inorganic + organic) N, ${{{\rm{NO}}}_{3}}^{-}$ –N, ${{{\rm{NH}}}_{4}}^{+}$ –N, total P, ${…
Assessing the potential additionality of certification by the Round table on Responsible Soybeans and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
Table We calculate low and high estimates of the fraction of total tree cover loss due to crop expansion, as well as the fraction of tree cover loss attributable to soy or oil palm ""expansion (BAU). Tree cover loss data are derived by applying a 30% canopy cover threshold to annual Landsat-derived percent tree cover data (21), while crop expansion data were downloaded from FAOSTAT (42). Oil palm area for Cambodia was not available from FAOSTAT. …
Making Change' in the memorial landscape to the Dakota-US War of 1862: Remembrance, healing and justice through affective participation in the Dakota Commemorative March (DCM)
The Dakota–US War of 1862 led to the removal and exile of Dakota people from their ancestral homeland. Integral to this process was the forced march of 1,700 women, children and elders from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Despite the siting of numerous memorials related to the war and its aftermath, few mark the forced march and its legacies. Since 2002, however, the seven-day Dakota Commemorative March (DCM) has been held bie…
Rethinking Agricultural Trade Relationships in an Era of Globalization
Agricultural trade plays an important role in global food security and resource sustainability. Global food commodities trade is worth more than US$520 billion per year, could feed approximately two billion people, uses about 13% of worldwide cropland and pasture, and has geographically concentrated irrigation water demands. However, researchers rarely compare these monetary, nutritional, and resource metrics, which limits our ability to holistic…
Modeling relationships between water table depth and peat soil carbon loss in Southeast Asian plantations
Plantation-associated drainage of Southeast Asian peatlands has accelerated in recent years. Draining exposes the upper peat layer to oxygen, leading to elevated decomposition rates and net soil carbon losses. Empirical studies indicate positive relationships between long-term water table (WT) depth and soil carbon loss rate in peatlands. These correlations potentially enable using WT depth as a proxy for soil carbon losses from peatland plantati…
Leverage points for improving global food security and the environment
How to optimize global food production Keeping societies stable and managing Earth's resources sustainably depend on doing a good, steady job producing and distributing food. West et al. asked what combinations of crops and regions offer the best chance of progress. Their analysis focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient pollution, water use, and food waste. They identify regions that are likely to yield the best balance between app…
Multiple pathways of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes
Commodity crop expansion, for both global and domestic urban markets, follows multiple land change pathways entailing direct and indirect deforestation, and results in various social and environmental impacts. Here we compare six published case studies of rapid commodity crop expansion within forested tropical regions. Across cases, between 1.7% and 89.5% of new commodity cropland was sourced from forestlands. Four main factors controlled pathway…
Committed carbon emissions, deforestation, and community land conversion from oil palm plantation expansion in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Industrial agricultural plantations are a rapidly increasing yet largely unmeasured source of tropical land cover change. Here, we evaluate impacts of oil palm plantation development on land cover, carbon flux, and agrarian community lands in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. With a spatially explicit land change/carbon bookkeeping model, parameterized using high-resolution satellite time series and informed by socioeconomic surveys, we assess …
Redd pilot project scenarios: Are costs and benefits altered by spatial scale
Payments for reducing carbon emissions due to deforestation and degradation (REDD) have garnered considerable global interest and investments. These financial incentives aim to alter the drivers of land use change by reducing opportunity costs of retaining forest cover, and are often promoted as multipartite solutions that not only generate profits and reduce carbon emissions but provide benefits for human development and biodiversity. Currently,…
Criteria for effective zero-deforestation commitments
Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effec…
Circular labor migration and land-livelihood dynamics in Southeast Asia's concession landscapes
Progress towards sustainable intensification in China challenged by land-use change
Impact of palm oil sustainability certification on village well-being and poverty in Indonesia
Making Change' in the memorial landscape to the Dakota-US War of 1862: Remembrance, healing and justice through affective participation in the Dakota Commemorative March (DCM)
The Dakota–US War of 1862 led to the removal and exile of Dakota people from their ancestral homeland. Integral to this process was the forced march of 1,700 women, children and elders from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Despite the siting of numerous memorials related to the war and its aftermath, few mark the forced march and its legacies. Since 2002, however, the seven-day Dakota Commemorative March (DCM) has been held bie…
Redd pilot project scenarios: Are costs and benefits altered by spatial scale
Payments for reducing carbon emissions due to deforestation and degradation (REDD) have garnered considerable global interest and investments. These financial incentives aim to alter the drivers of land use change by reducing opportunity costs of retaining forest cover, and are often promoted as multipartite solutions that not only generate profits and reduce carbon emissions but provide benefits for human development and biodiversity. Currently,…
Committed carbon emissions, deforestation, and community land conversion from oil palm plantation expansion in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Industrial agricultural plantations are a rapidly increasing yet largely unmeasured source of tropical land cover change. Here, we evaluate impacts of oil palm plantation development on land cover, carbon flux, and agrarian community lands in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. With a spatially explicit land change/carbon bookkeeping model, parameterized using high-resolution satellite time series and informed by socioeconomic surveys, we assess …
Leverage points for improving global food security and the environment
How to optimize global food production Keeping societies stable and managing Earth's resources sustainably depend on doing a good, steady job producing and distributing food. West et al. asked what combinations of crops and regions offer the best chance of progress. Their analysis focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient pollution, water use, and food waste. They identify regions that are likely to yield the best balance between app…
Multiple pathways of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes
Commodity crop expansion, for both global and domestic urban markets, follows multiple land change pathways entailing direct and indirect deforestation, and results in various social and environmental impacts. Here we compare six published case studies of rapid commodity crop expansion within forested tropical regions. Across cases, between 1.7% and 89.5% of new commodity cropland was sourced from forestlands. Four main factors controlled pathway…
Rethinking Agricultural Trade Relationships in an Era of Globalization
Agricultural trade plays an important role in global food security and resource sustainability. Global food commodities trade is worth more than US$520 billion per year, could feed approximately two billion people, uses about 13% of worldwide cropland and pasture, and has geographically concentrated irrigation water demands. However, researchers rarely compare these monetary, nutritional, and resource metrics, which limits our ability to holistic…
Modeling relationships between water table depth and peat soil carbon loss in Southeast Asian plantations
Plantation-associated drainage of Southeast Asian peatlands has accelerated in recent years. Draining exposes the upper peat layer to oxygen, leading to elevated decomposition rates and net soil carbon losses. Empirical studies indicate positive relationships between long-term water table (WT) depth and soil carbon loss rate in peatlands. These correlations potentially enable using WT depth as a proxy for soil carbon losses from peatland plantati…
Biomass burning drives atmospheric nutrient redistribution within forested peatlands in Borneo
Biomass burning plays a critical role not only in atmospheric emissions, but also in the deposition and redistribution of biologically important nutrients within tropical landscapes. We quantified the influence of fire on biogeochemical fluxes of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S) in a 12 ha forested peatland in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Total (inorganic + organic) N, ${{{\rm{NO}}}_{3}}^{-}$ –N, ${{{\rm{NH}}}_{4}}^{+}$ –N, total P, ${…
Assessing the potential additionality of certification by the Round table on Responsible Soybeans and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
Table We calculate low and high estimates of the fraction of total tree cover loss due to crop expansion, as well as the fraction of tree cover loss attributable to soy or oil palm ""expansion (BAU). Tree cover loss data are derived by applying a 30% canopy cover threshold to annual Landsat-derived percent tree cover data (21), while crop expansion data were downloaded from FAOSTAT (42). Oil palm area for Cambodia was not available from FAOSTAT. …
Making Change' in the memorial landscape to the Dakota-US War of 1862: Remembrance, healing and justice through affective participation in the Dakota Commemorative March (DCM)
The Dakota–US War of 1862 led to the removal and exile of Dakota people from their ancestral homeland. Integral to this process was the forced march of 1,700 women, children and elders from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Despite the siting of numerous memorials related to the war and its aftermath, few mark the forced march and its legacies. Since 2002, however, the seven-day Dakota Commemorative March (DCM) has been held bie…
Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits
Effect of oil palm sustainability certification on deforestation and fire in Indonesia
Significance Demand for agricultural commodities is the leading driver of tropical deforestation. Many corporations have pledged to eliminate forest loss from their supply chains by purchasing only certified “sustainable” products. To evaluate whether certification fulfills such pledges, we applied statistical analyses to satellite-based estimates of tree cover loss to infer the causal impact of a third-party certification system on deforestation…
Balancing tradeoffs: Reconciling multiple environmental goals when ecosystem services vary regionally
As the planet’s dominant land use, agriculture often competes with the preservation of natural systems that provide globally and regionally important ecosystem services. How agriculture impacts ecosystem service delivery varies regionally, among services being considered, and across spatial scales. Here, we assess the tradeoffs between four ecosystem services—agricultural production, carbon storage, biophysical climate regulation, and biodiversit…
Progress towards sustainable intensification in China challenged by land-use change
Criteria for effective zero-deforestation commitments
Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effec…
Circular labor migration and land-livelihood dynamics in Southeast Asia's concession landscapes
The Global Methane Budget 2000–2017
Understanding and quantifying the global methane (CH4) budget is important for assessing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. Atmospheric emissions and concentrations of CH4 continue to increase, making CH4 the second most important human-influenced greenhouse gas in terms of climate forcing, after carbon dioxide (CO2). The relative importance of CH4 compared to CO2 depends on its shorter atmospheric lifetime, stronger warming potential…
Does oil palm certification create trade-offs between environment and development in Indonesia
Environmental and social problems triggered by rapid palm oil expansion in the tropics have spurred the proliferation of sustainability certification systems such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). While the RSPO aims to improve the impact of oil palm production on people and environments, its effect on local development, environmental quality, and, especially, potential trade-offs between these outcomes remain unclear. Here, we ev…
Deforestation spillovers from oil palm sustainability certification
Environmental policies that impose restrictions within one location may be undermined or reinforced by ‘spillover effects,’ the movement of actors, processes, or knowledge to other locations. Such spillovers are an important consideration in the design of interventions seeking to reduce commodity driven deforestation. In these settings, global markets and mobile actors can move deforestation and conservation behaviors over large distances, compli…
Impact of palm oil sustainability certification on village well-being and poverty in Indonesia
The role of third-party audits in ensuring producer compliance with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification system
Certification systems for sustainable agricultural commodities typically rely on auditors to verify that producers comply with environmental, social, and legal standards. In the oil palm industry, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification system promises to address core sectoral sustainability concerns—including deforestation, fire, biodiversity loss, peatland drainage, forced labor, and land tenure conflict—by applying third-pa…
Gaps in adoption and implementation limit the current and potential effectiveness of zero-deforestation supply chain policies for soy
Tropical deforestation continues despite global efforts to curb forest loss. Corporate zero-deforestation supply chain commitments (ZDCs) have the potential to address this deforestation, especially if strong state-led forest governance is absent. Yet, because ZDC adoption is limited to particular locations and supply chains, these commitments may fall short at reducing regional deforestation and protecting biodiverse ecosystems. Here, we leverag…
Global rainbow distribution under current and future climates
Rainbows contribute to human wellbeing by providing an inspiring connection to nature. Because the rainbow is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that results from the refraction of sunlight by rainwater droplets, changes in precipitation and cloud cover due to anthropogenic climate forcing will alter rainbow distribution. Yet, we lack a basic understanding of the current spatial distribution of rainbows and how climate change might alter this patt…
Smallholder participation in zero-deforestation supply chain initiatives in the Indonesian palm oil sector: Challenges, opportunities, and limitations
As actors in tropical agricultural commodity supply chains implement commitments to end deforestation, they risk exacerbating social inequities by excluding smallholder farmers, who are important producers of many tropical commodity crops. Here, we explore the potential for independent oil palm smallholders in Indonesia to participate in zero-deforestation supply chains. We find that these smallholders are underrepresented in the share of zero-de…
How well does the implementation of corporate zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia align with aims to halt deforestation and include smallholders
In response to growing scrutiny surrounding commodity-driven deforestation, companies have introduced zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) with ambitious environmental and social targets. However, such initiatives may not effectively reduce deforestation if they are not aligned with the spatial extent of remaining forests at risk. They may also fail to avert socio-economic risks if ZDCs do not consider smallholder farmers’ needs. We assess the s…
Long-standing labour migration, new plantation enclosures, and social reproduction in Indonesian Borneo’s borderlands
Economics (17 works) · Business (15 works) · Natural resource economics (15 works) · Environmental Science (14 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (13 works) · Geography (13 works) · Ecology (11 works) · Sustainability (11 works) · Oil Palm Production and Sustainability (10 works) · Agricultural economics (8 works)