Derek T. Robinson

Room EV1-314, ext. 41789
dtrobinson@uwaterloo.ca
 

Derek joined the Department in 2012 with interests that lie at the center of land use, land management, and the carbon cycle. He uses agent-based modelling as an approach to integrate GIS, ecological, and human decision-making models to evaluate socio-economic contexts and policy scenarios on changes to land use and land cover, ecological function and the provision of ecosystem services, and human well-being.

For more information, visit Derek Robinson's personal website.

Key Areas of Graduate Supervision
Land-use and land-cover change, land-management and the carbon cycle, land grabs, land policy, agent-based modelling and geographical information systems.

Recent Courses Taught
GEOG/PLAN 318: Spatial Analysis
GEOG/PLAN 381: Advanced Geographic Information Systems
GEOG/PLAN 481: Geographical Information Systems Project
GEMCC 630: Land Use and the Carbon Cycle (new)

Research Interests
My research involves building representations (i.e., models) of natural and human systems to estimate the impacts of land change scenarios and land-use policies on ecosystem function, human well-being, and sustainable livelihoods. I typically use agent-based approaches to integrate GIS, ecological, and human decision-making models (with a range of different types of data) to answer research questions at the intersection of these fields of research

Recent Publications

• 2013. Agrawal, A., Brown, D.G., Rao, G., Riolo, R., Robinson, D.T., and M. Bommarito. Interactions between Organizations and Networks in Common-Pool Resource Governance, Environmental Science & Policy
• 2013. Robinson, D.T., Shipeng, S., Hutchins, M., Riolo, R.L., Brown, D.G., Parker, D.C., Currie, W.S., Filatova, T., and S. Kiger. Effects of land markets and land management on ecosystem function: A framework for modelling exurban land-changes. Environmental Modelling and Software. DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2012.06.016 (available online)
• 2013. Luus, N., Robinson, D.T. and P.J. Deadman. Representing environmental processes in agent-based models of land use and cover change using ecological model approaches. Journal of Land Use Science.
• 2012. Robinson, D.T., Murray-Rust, D., Rieser, V., Melicic, V., and M. Rounsevell. Modelling the impacts of land system dynamics on human well-being: using an agent-based approach to cope with data limitations in Koper, Slovenia. Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems 36(2):  164-176. DOI:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2011.10.002
• 2012. Rounsevell, M., Robinson, D.T. and D. Murray-Rust. From actors to agents in socio-ecological systems models. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 367: 259-269. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0187
• 2012. Robinson, D.T., Land-cover fragmentation and configuration of ownership parcels in an exurban landscape. Urban Ecosystems. 15: 53-69. DOI: 10.1007/s11252-011-0205-4
• 2009. Robinson, D.T. and D.G. Brown, Evaluating the effects of land-use development policies on ex-urban forest cover: an integrated agent-based GIS approach. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 23(9): 1211-1232.
• 2009. Robinson. D.T., Brown, D.G., and W.S. Currie. Modelling carbon storage in highly fragmented and human dominated landscapes: linking land-cover patterns and ecosystem models. Ecological Modelling 220: 1325-1338.
• 2009. Zellner M.L., Page S.E., Rand W., Brown D.G., Robinson D.T., Nassauer J., and B. Low. The emergence of zoning policy games in exurban jurisdictions. Land Use Policy 26: 356-367.