Qing Tian
qtian2@gmu.edu
Department of Computational Social Science
George Mason University
United States Virgin Islands
Biography
Qing Tian is an interdisciplinary researcher with broad interests in land use, development, human-environment systems, and complex adaptive systems in general. Her research integrates social, economic, environmental and institutional perspectives and combines computer modeling with other methods (surveys, interviews, and spatial analysis) to study land use and development in less developed areas and sustainability of human-environment systems. She is also interested in policy from the perspective of complex adaptive systems and, related to this, human cognition and decision making. Her current projects examine the influence of urbanization on agricultural land use and synergy between broader development and climatic adaptation in China. Prior to her appointment at George Mason University, she worked as an assistant research professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China), a research fellow at the International Center for Science and High Technology/United Nations Industrial Organization (Trieste, Italy), and a software engineer for VERITAS Software (Reston, VA). She holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Beijing University, an M.S. in Cartography and Remote Sensing from Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. Her doctorate dissertation, From Vulnerability to Sustainability: Rural Development in the Poyang Lake Region of China amid Institutional Changes and Flood Hazards, supervised by Daniel Brown, applies the science of complexity to the study of the human-environment system around Poyang Lake. After completion of her PhD, she studied with Robert Axelrod as a postdoc in the Ford School of Public Policy.
Research Interest
Social, Economic, Environmental and Institutional perspectives and combines computer modeling with other methods (surveys, interviews, and spatial analysis) to study land use and development in less developed areas and sustainability of human-environment systems
Publications
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Tian, Q. , Holland, J. H., Brown, D.G. (2016). Social and economic impacts of subsidy policies on rural development in the Poyang Lake Region, China: Insights from an agent-based model. Agricultural Systems, 148, 12-27.
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Zhang, R., Tian, Q., Jiang, L., Crooks, A., Qi, S., Yang, R. (in press). Projecting cropping patterns around Poyang Lake and prioritizing areas for policy intervention to promote rice. Land Use Policy.
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Tian, Q., Jiang, L., Lemos, M., Qi., S. (submitted). Interactions of social, natural, and technological subsystems and synergy between development and climate adaptation: Evidence from China. Nature Climate Change.
