Marisa J. Mazzotta, Assistant Professor Research

Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Research Interests:

Ecological-economic research focused on sustainable policies, practices, planning and management. Areas of interest and application include: criteria and indicators for assessing sustainability; ecological-economic theory and models for coastal, estuarine and marine ecosystem management; non-market valuation of natural resources and environmental amenities; environmental philosophy and valuation; natural resource damage assessment; natural resource restoration.

Current Projects:

• "Combining Economic and Ecological Indicators to Prioritize Wetlands Restoration Projects Within a Spatial GIS Framework." Funded by NSF.  Goal: to develop and implement a GIS-based tool for prioritizing wetlands restoration projects, combining social, economic, and ecological value indicators, applied to Narragansett Bay.
• Economic Valuation Handbook for Large Marine Ecosystems.  Applying economic valuation methods to large marine ecosystems.
• Ecosystem Valuation Website, www.ecosystemvalues.org. Description of ecosystem valuation methods and their application for non-economists.
• Assessment of Criteria for Defining and Selecting Sustainability Indicators.  Investigation of the use of criteria for gauging whether indicators are measuring sustainability.
• Proposal in Process: "Applying Systems Theory to Economic Approaches to Environmental Problems." Goal is to explore the implications of a shift from reductionist approaches to approaches based on systems theory for economic theories and methods as applied to environmental problems.