Kimberly
Carlson
Assistant Professor
University of Hawaii
Kimberly Carlson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management. As a land systems scientist with a focus on tropical agriculture and environmental governance, Carlson’s expertise spans the disciplines of remote sensing, tropical ecology, biogeochemistry, and land change modeling. She received her PhD from Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and holds a Bachelor of Science with Honors from Stanford University. Most recently, she was a Global Landscapes Initiative Post-doctoral Research Scholar at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment. Carlson leverages diverse methods including innovative analysis of remote sensing products, land change modeling, and field data collected using natural and social science methods. Her work is solutions-oriented and informs environmental policies and practices at local to global scales. Recent projects include assessing the influence of zero-deforestation commitments on ecosystem conservation in soy, cattle, and oil palm supply chains, examining the influence of labor migration and remittances on land use and control around large-scale plantations in Indonesia, and evaluating the social and environmental impacts of sustainability certification in the oil palm sector.