As we ring in the New Year and look ahead to 2024 goals and aspirations, I wanted to take a minute to recognize my great team here at NC State and their varied accomplishments over the past year. It is truly rewarding to work with such a fantastic group of scholars, and I am fortunate to play a role in their professional development. Here are a few key highlights from the Baker RES-Lab and SOFAC affiliates over the last year –

• Alexandra Hays completed her MS in Natural Resources with an economics and policy focus. Her important and timely thesis work addresses food and water insecurity in California’s Central Valley, offering a unique blend of economic, social science, and public policy perspectives. Allie recently started a new position as an Energy Trading Analyst at Brookfield Renewable U.S.
• Thu Ho completed her MS in Forestry and her time as a STEPS Scholar at NC State. Her innovative thesis work included analyses of fertilizer price volatility and the evolution of trade networks for nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. For the latter, she adapted complex network analysis methods commonly employed in sociology and linguistics.
• Ziqian Gong is the Co-PI on the new STEPS modeling project: Modeling Pathways to 25-in-25: Global-to-Local Scale Considerations, Market Dependencies, and Tradeoffs across P, N and C Policy Objectives. Dr. Gong continues to advance model development and application for the US GLOBIOM and FABLE teams in collaboration with scientists at IIASA, RTI International, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Diego.
• David Rossi continues to thrive supporting the SOFAC community and recently transitioned to a new role as a Research Scholar at NC State. Dr. Rossi is leading up SRTS model development and FIA analysis efforts for SOFAC and published innovative research on forest carbon offsets and additionality in 2023, among other publications.
• Arpita Nehra advanced an interdisciplinary project on the benefits of forest preservation on drinking water systems and presented research at the AWRA and SEA meetings. Dr. Nehra is now transitioning to a new project on the economic impacts of hurricanes on forest product markets at NC State.
• Gaurav Dhungel had a productive year, contributing to four publications (two as first author!). He led the first publication using the Hardwood SRTS model and presented new research on mesophication – the endogenous environmental change – at Camp Resources.
• Olakunle Sodiya supported new research on climate change impacts to the U.S. forest sector and presented new work on monitoring wood production and consumption at the SAF annual convention and SOFAC annual meeting.
• Madisen Fuller, Shiyue Yao, and Chanheung Cho attended the AAEA annual meeting in Washington, DC, presenting new research on afforestation/reforestation policy, the effects of state-level RPS policies on bioelectricity generation, and optimal management of legacy phosphorus under limited information.
• Sarah Puls presented her research on harvested wood product carbon flows at multiple venues and submitted her first manuscript for peer review.
• Ivan Raigosa-García spent time in Sweden studying ecophysiology and presented cool new research on precision forestry at multiple conferences.
• Manaswini Ganjam attended the Forest Resiliency Data Synthesis Working Group short course in Boulder, CO and advanced her work on ecological modeling of forest ecosystems under global change.
• Madisen Fuller completed a first-of-its kind national assessment of forest expansion possibilities using an optimization model that links economic opportunity costs of forest establishment and expansion with spatially explicit socioeconomic indicators.
• Several students were able to participate in a workshop at the University of Idaho on Forest Carbon Economics and Modeling that I co-organized with Greg Latta.
• RES-Lab affiliate Chris Wade has recently transitioned to a new role at RTI International, and luckily we continue to collaborate with Chris and team on many projects.

The RES-Lab is Growing!

We welcomed several new folks to the team as well over the last year:

• Richard Manner joined the RES-Lab in January and is pursuing an MS in Forestry after a several years in industry working on supply chain logistics and data analytics. He is passionate about climate adaptation and risk management in forestry and is currently applying portfolio theory to analyze private and social risks associated with U.S. timberland assets.
• Josephine Geraghty joined the RES-Lab in the fall semester from Furman University. She is a STEPS Scholar supporting the Center on its communications and public outreach efforts. Josephine is currently drawing from the shared socioeconomic pathways literature to develop phosphorus sustainability pathway narratives.
• Nathan Schunk joined lab in the fall after completing his MS in Computational Economics at ECU. Nathan is currently a Research Fellow with the Southeast Climate Adaptation Sciences Center (SECASC) and a STEPS Scholar. He is supporting STEPS economic modeling efforts, and is interested in distributional implications of nutrient management, coastal resource management, and systems dynamic frameworks that capture interdependencies between global and local resource management systems.

Look out for new opportunities for graduate students, postdocs, and early career scholars.

Outreach and Engagement Highlights

Here are few more highlights from SOFAC and the RES-Lab during a busy 2023, which saw a return to a more frequent travel schedule for in-person meetings and conferences:

• Hosted the SOFAC technical meeting in February and the Annual Meeting in August, both at the beautiful new Plant Sciences Building at NC State.
• Published a first-of-its kind Roadmap toward Phosphorus Sustainability in the U.S. led by RTI’s Innovation Advisors.
• Forest Carbon Economics and Modeling workshop at the University of Idaho
• Duke collaborator and PhD student Biz Yoder presented research on the agriculture-solar nexus at the AERE annual meeting in Maine.
• New white paper on GHG accounting considerations for BECCS published by the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI).
• Collaborated on four posters and three live presentations at the AAEA annual meeting.
• Presented a webinar on forests climate change hosted by NCASI.
• Attended the European Commission Policy Modeling Forum and ForestNavigator project meetings at IIASA.
• Presented at the AWRA annual meeting in Raleigh.
• Contributed to multiple publications and white papers with the FABLE Consortium.
• Started two new STEPS projects on modeling pathways to phosphorus sustainability and legacy P management.
• Initiated a new cooperative agreement with the US Forest Service (in collaboration Dr. Rachel Cook) on carbon management in southern pine and hardwood forest systems.

I’m looking forward to what’s ahead in 2024 and will post updates here occasionally. If you are interested in learning more about potential graduate research opportunities or collaboration with the lab, please reach out to me at [email protected].