Kyle Manley Dissertation Defense

Title: Integrating Nature and People: Innovating Approaches to Understand the Impact of Climate Change on Cultural Ecosystem Services

Abstract: Ecosystems and societies face increasing pressures from global change, including climate and land use changes. Subsequent impacts to ecosystems are compounded through the interactions, dependencies, and feedbacks with human systems (i.e. social-ecological systems). The interdependence of ecosystems and society is manifested through the invaluable contributions that nature provides to people, commonly referred to as ecosystem services. As climate change alters the structure and functioning of ecosystems, there are corresponding impacts on ecosystem services, consequently impacting human well-being. While climate change impacts on ecosystems are well studied, the subsequent impacts on the services they provide to people are less understood, especially in the case of the non-material benefits people derive from nature (i.e. cultural ecosystem services). Thus, we lack a holistic understanding of the implications of climate change on human well-being. My dissertation draws on a multitude of disciplines to unveil and test innovative methods, tools, and data to overcome historical limitations in studying cultural ecosystem services and assess their vulnerability to climate change. Specifically, I focus on using social sensing data (i.e. sensing/data collected from humans and/or their devices) and machine learning to map, model, and value climate change impacts on cultural ecosystem services in a holistic social-ecological fashion and in understudied data-poor regions of the world. Ultimately, this work develops and tests new approaches to accounting for the non-material benefits of nature to people in order to create a more comprehensive understanding of how climate change will impact human well-being.