Dr Martin Dallimer

Biography

I am interested in applying and integrating research techniques from across different disciplines to better understand the sustainable management of natural environments, biodiversity and ecosystems in a human-dominated world. Currently my research falls into three broad areas (i) biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services; (ii) sustainable agriculture, land-use and development; and (iii) urban greenspaces and sustainable cities. My work centres on applying and developing methods to capture the value (both in monetary and non-monetary terms, as well as metrics of ecological 'quality') of catchments, ecosystems and natural environments. I am particularly interested in how these values might be linked both to biodiversity and underlying ecosystem functions, as well as to human health, well-being and life chances. Prior to starting my current lectureship at the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds I held a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship at the University of Copenhagen. Between 2006 and 2011, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield. Initially I worked on the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) project “A Landscape-Scale Analysis of the Sustainability of the Hill Farming Economy on Upland Landscapes and Biodiversity”. From 2009, my focus shifted to the EPSRC-funded Sustainable Urban Environments project “UrbanRivers and Sustainable Living Agendas”. Both represented quite a shift from my NERC-CASE funded PhD “Understanding Migration Patterns of the Red-Billed Quelea in Southern Africa”, which centred on using molecular ecology and behavioural techniques and was based at the University of Edinburgh. Recently I have picked up my interest in the red-billed quelea, but now with a focus on their role as crop pests.

Research Interest

Capturing the benefits that people gain from the natural world, using monetary and non-monetary assessments of value Urbanisation & urban ecosystems Human-wildlife interactions The use of stated preference techniques for valuing biodiversity & ecosystem services Non-monetary approaches to quantifying preferences for, and well-being gains from, biodiversity & the natural world Agriculture, land management & land use change