Evan Patrick

University of California, Berkeley, Environmental Science, Policy And Management, Graduate Student

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Graduate student taking a land systems approach to climate adaptation and resilience in smallholder agriculture in Latin America. Currently exploring the effects of drought on farmer livelihoods and sustainability in Guatemala through remote sensing and socio-ecological analysis.
Supervisors: Matthew Potts

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Forest product market conditions mediate the scale and benefits of sustainable forest management in the Tahoe-Central Sierra Region

Current Research in Environmental Sustainability, 2025

Forests in the Western United States face escalating threats from wildfire, pest outbreaks, and d... more Forests in the Western United States face escalating threats from wildfire, pest outbreaks, and drought, leading experts and policymakers to call for extensive forest management to promote forest resilience and reduce wildfire risk. High treatment costs represent a major choke point to achieving forest management goals, but selling timber and biomass from forest thinning can offset costs and provide the revenue to help rapidly scale management actions. In this study, we assess how forest product market conditions influence the economic feasibility and scale of forest management by modeling treatment potential across a Northern Sierra Nevada landscape using the US Forest Service's BioSum tool. We evaluate treatment outcomes across nine economic scenarios, incorporating wood and biomass price variations and treatment subsidies. Results indicate that baseline pricing assumptions facilitate aggressive forest treatment where thinning is feasible and needed, but a 50 % drop in forest product prices led to a one-third decline in treated area. These reductions are completely offset by a $500/acre treatment subsidy, suggesting that subsidies could serve as a 'price floor' to maintain treatment levels through market fluctuations. Optimal, cost-effective treatments overwhelmingly utilized prescribed fire following thinning, emphasizing the role of fire-inclusive approaches for forest treatment. While study findings indicate that forest product markets can support landscape-scale treatments, the capacity of regional processing facilities currently limits full utilization of forest products, underscoring the importance of expanding wood and biomass utilization infrastructure to realize the potential of market-driven strategies for improving forest resilience in the Sierra Nevada and similar fire-prone regions. ☆ This article is part of a Special issue entitled: 'Sust Sol INVITE ONLY' published in Current Research in Environmental Sustainability.

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Assessing land use change trajectories following food insecurity shocks in 25 low-and middle-income countries

Global Environmental Change, 2025

Food insecurity is a perennial problem in much of the developing world, with gains against hunger... more Food insecurity is a perennial problem in much of the developing world, with gains against hunger backsliding in recent years and climate change predicted to accelerate this trend. Food insecurity is highly disruptive to rural livelihoods and can lead to dramatic shifts in food production strategies and resultant land use. However, studies to date have yet to outline the overarching patterns of land use change that can result from food insecurity. We elucidate the impact of food insecurity events between 2013 and 2020 in 25 low-and middle-income countries on resulting land use change and demographics. Using propensity score matching, we create a counterfactual and assess changes in forest cover, crop cover, population and nighttime luminosity between regions that experience food insecurity and comparable food-secure regions. Land use change theory, specifically the classical trajectories of agricultural intensification, land rent theory, and regime shifts help to explain observed land use trajectories. We find that food insecurity events lead to around a 4 % decline in population and a 3 % decline in cropped areas, alongside a 4 % increase in forest cover compared to control regions. Additionally, we show that drought-driven food insecurity drives impacts on land use and conflict-driven food insecurity shows greater impacts on population and nighttime luminosity. Food insecurity shocks result in an increase in population and crop cover in urban areas despite losses in adjoining rural land, suggesting that food insecurity drives local rural to urban migration. Furthermore, by assessing the impacts of discrete food insecurity events in three countries, we find that regional contexts mediate impacts by producing variable land use change trajectories.

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Using payment for ecosystem services to meet national reforestation commitments: impacts of 20+ years of forestry incentives in Guatemala

Environmental Research Letters, 2023

International environmental initiatives, such as the Bonn Challenge and the UN Decade on Restorat... more International environmental initiatives, such as the Bonn Challenge and the UN Decade on Restoration, have prompted countries to put the management and restoration of forest landscapes at the center of their land use and climate policies. To support these goals, many governments are promoting forest landscape restoration and management through financial forestry incentives, a form of payment for ecosystem services. Since 1996, Guatemala has implemented a series of forestry incentives that promote active forest landscape restoration and management on private and communal lands. These programs have been widely hailed as a success with nearly 600 000 ha enrolled since 1998. However, there has been no systematic assessment of the effectiveness of these programs on preserving and restoring Guatemalan forests. This study evaluates the impacts of over 16 000 individual PES projects funded through two incentive programs using a synthetic control counterfactual. Overall, a program for smallholders resulted in lower rates of forest loss, while a program for industrial timber owners led to greater gains in forest cover. Across policies, we found dramatically higher forest cover increases from restoration projects (15% forest cover increase) compared to plantation and agroforestry projects (3%-6% increase in forest cover). Projects that protected natural forest also showed a 6% reduction in forest loss. We found forest cover increases to be under 10% of total enrolled area, although positive local spillovers suggest this is an underestimate. Restoration projects show the most promise at promoting forest landscape restoration, but these benefits need to be weighed against priorities like resilience and rural development, which may be better served by other projects.

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