Land Use & Open Space Conservation

Editor's Note: The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation helped fund Sarah's early work on Conservation Development with the Wildlife Conservation Society through a Leadership Grant.

Different patterns of urban development may have widely varying long-term effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To investigate such effects, we used UPlan geographic information system–based software to model three 2050 urban-growth scenarios for Yolo County, a predominantly agricultural area near Sacramento, Califor- nia. Two scenarios correspond to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s A2 and B1 storylines.

On December 11, 2013, we released the report Changes to the Land: Four Scenarios for the Future of the Massachusetts Landscape (link will download report) to an overwhelmingly positive response.

China's environmental situation is frequently scrutinized both within China and across the world. In the second half of a two-part podcast Angel Hsu, a China expert completing her PhD this May at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, discusses urbanization in China and India and China's push to develop sustainable ecocities. Listen to the podcast

Every day, San Franciscans pay the price of an underfunded transportation system. We have all experienced painfully overcrowded bus rides ... or, worse yet, the bus that never shows up. Now, Muni is reducing service during Christmas week, as it is faced with a $7 million deficit this fiscal year.