Affiliated Faculty Detail

Hilary Sigman
Phone: 848-932-8667
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Title: Professor of Economics
Office: New Jersey Hall 422/424
Research Interests: Environmental Economics, Public Economics, Law and Economics
ENVS Courses Taught: Econ 432: Environmental Economics

Mike Siegel
Phone: 848-445-4054
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Title: Cartographer
Office: LSH B261
Office Hours:
Tuesday 1:30-2:30 PM

Friday 1:30-2:30 PM
ENVS Courses Taught: Principles of Cartography, Advanced Cartography

http://mapmaker.rutgers.edu/

Laura C. Schneider
Phone: (848) 445-0071
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Title: Professor
Graduate Program Director
Office: LSH - room B234
Research Interests: land systems science, tropical ecosystems, remote sensing, Latin America
Degrees: (Ph.D., Clark)
ENVS Courses Taught: Global Ecosystems and Biodiversity, Remote Sensing, Environmental Studies Capstone

Research website: Welcome to the Land Systems Science Research Group

Google Scholar Profile

Research Interests:
Laura Schneider’s research intersects land systems science and biogeography. Her research focuses on understanding changes in tropical landscapes using a socio-ecological systems approach. She is interested in measuring forest responses following environmental disturbances, monitoring and modeling tropical deforestation and re-growth, and mapping forest dynamics. Her research shows how tropical secondary forests are resilient to disturbances, and how rural landscapes are shaped by land management practices occurring under particular ecological contexts. It also demonstrates the importance of methods linking field data to regional characterizations using remotely sensed data in assessing ecosystem services.

Dr. Schneider’s ongoing projects include Environmental Disturbances in Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, supported by a grant from the Moore Foundation; and The Spontaneous Spread of Silvopastoral Landscapes in the Ecuadorian Amazon, which was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation through the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program. Recently, Laura held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award in Biodiversity and Sustainable Development. Her Fulbright research focuses on landscape change in the Colombian Orinoco: the effects of armed conflict on deforestation in protected areas and the effects of the peace treaty reached in 2016 on land consolidation programs in the region.

Selected Publications:

Calzada, L., Schneider, L. C., & Figueroa, F. (2025). Local perspectives and institutional bricolage around conservation and development: Sembrando Vida and the Maya Train in the Southern Yucatán Peninsula. *Regional Environmental Change, 25*(4), 1–17. Open Access link.

Armenteras, D., L. Schneider and L. Davalos. 2019. Fires in protected areas reveal unforeseen costs for Colombian peace. Nature Ecology and Evolution, https://rdcu.be/bb0aX

Schneider, L., A. Lerner, M. McGroody and T. Rudel. 2018. Assessing the provision of ecosystem services by sivopastoral landscapes: estimating above ground carbon in Ecuadorian Amazonian silvopastoral farms using optical remote sensing and field measurements. Journal of Land Use Science/ https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2018.1542463

Ramirez, C. D., Orrego S. A. and L. Schneider. 2018. Identifying Drivers and Spatial Pattern of Deforestation in a Strategic Watershed, Rio Grande Basin (Colombian Andes). Journal of Latin American Geography, 17(1):108-138.

Rudel, T., B. Paul., D. White, I.M. Rao, R. Van Der Hoek, A. Castro, M. Boval, A. Lerner, L. Schneider and M. Peters. LivestockPlus: Forages, sustainable intensification, and food security in the tropics. AMBIO, DOI 10.1007/s13280-015-0676-2

McGroody, Lerner, A, D. Burbano L. Schneider and T. Rudel. Carbon Stocks in Silvopastoral Systems: A Study from Four Communities in Southeastern Ecuador. Biotropica 47 (4) 407-415.

Lerner, A., T. Rudel, L. Schneider, M. McGroddy, D. Burbano and C. Mena. The spontaneous emergence of silvo-pastoral landscapes in the Ecuadorian Amazon: patterns and process. 2015. Regional Environmental Change 15 (7): 1421-1431

McGroody, M., D. Lawrence, L. Schneider, J. Rogan, I. Zager and B. Schmook. 2013. Damage patterns after Hurricane Dean in the southern Yucatán: Has human activity resulted in more resistant forests. Forest Ecology and Management. 310, 812-820

Márdero S., Nickl E. , Schmook B., Schneider L. , Rogan J., Christman Z. and Lawrence D. 2012. Sequías en el Sur de la Península de Yucatán: Análisis de la variabilidad anual y estacional de la precipitación/ Droughts in the Southern Yucatán Peninsula: Analysis of the annual and seasonal precipitation variability. Investigaciones Geográficas. 78:19-33.

Vandecar, K., D. Lawrence, D. Richards, L. Schneider, J. Rogan and B. Schmook. 2011. Response of dry tropical forest to Hurricane Dean in the southern Yucatán Peninsula: Species-level impacts. Biotropica. 43(6):676-684.

Rogan J., L. Schneider, Z. Christman, M. Millones, D. Lawrence and B. Schmook. 2011. Hurricane Disturbance Mapping using MODIS EVI Data in the South-Eastern Yucatán, Mexico. Remote Sensing Letters 2(3): 259-267

Schneider L.C. and N. Fernando. An untidy cover: Invasion of Bracken Fern in the shifting cultivation systems of Southern Yucatán, Mexico. Biotropica 42(1): 41-48.

Teaching:

Remote Sensing: 450-322
Global Ecosystems and Biodiversity: 450-306
Latin America: 450-336
Graduate Seminar in Land Change Science: 450:511

Graduate Students:

Leonardo Calzada (PhD) (starting Fall 2020)
Steven King (MA)
Alana Rader (PhD)
Tabby Fenn (PhD, 2018)
Diya Paul (PhD, 2018)
Irene Zager (PhD, 2015)
Gabriella Ulloa (MA, 2018)
Joshua Randall (MS, 2015)
Jacob Gable (MA, 2013)

Jesse Rodenbiker
Phone: 848-445-4355
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Title: Assistant Professor
Office: LSH - room B263
Research Interests: environmental governance, urban geography, inequality, displacement, political ecology, sustainability, China
Degrees: (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley)
ENVS Courses Taught: Environment, Society, and Justice

Curriculum Vitae

Research Website

Google Scholar Profile

I am a human-environment geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist. My work focuses on environmental governance, urbanization, sustainable development, displacement, and social inequality in China and globally. I critically engage with environmental science, policy, and planning, urban geography, and political ecology, as well as other fields. I am the author of the book Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China (2023, Cornell University Press), which was recognized as a Ludwik Fleck Prize Finalist by the Society for Social Studies of Science.

Ecological States critically examines ecological policies in the People's Republic of China to show how campaigns of scientifically based environmental protection transform nature and society. While many point to China's ecological civilization programs as a new paradigm for global environmental governance, I argue that ecological redlining extends the reach of the authoritarian state. Although Chinese urban sustainability initiatives have driven millions of citizens from their land and housing, I show that these migrants are not passive subjects of state policy. Instead, they creatively navigate resettlement processes in pursuit of their own benefit. However, their resistance is limited by varied forms of state-backed infrastructural violence. Through extensive fieldwork with scientists, urban planners, and everyday citizens in southwestern China, Ecological States exposes the ways in which the scientific logics and practices fundamental to China's green urbanization have solidified state power and contributed to dispossession and social inequality.

Ecological States is freely available in an open access edition through the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

Rodenbiker EcologicalStates CUP cover

More recently, I have worked on the relationship between urban politics of consumption and biodiversity loss at sea, as well as on global China and the environment. The former project has brought me to urban seafood markets across Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and New York City, as well as the aqueous landscapes that supply them, including Mid-Atlantic fisheries. The latter project has involved research on global biodiversity governance, Southeast Asian marine environments, and Chinese land investment in the American Midwest.

I serve on the advisory committee of the Global Asias Initiative and am affiliated with the Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies. At Rutgers, I teach courses on international and global studies, East Asia, geographical methods, environment, society and justice, and global China.

I have held postdoctoral research fellowships at Princeton University with the Center on Contemporary China at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and at Cornell University with the Atkinson Center of Sustainability and the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment. At Sichuan University, I served as a Visiting Scholar in the School of Public Administration with the Department of Land and Resource Management. I am a Wilson China Fellow and a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations (NCUSCR). I am a Public Intellectual Program (PIP) Fellow with NCUSCR, Cohort IX. Support for my research has come from the American Council of Learned Societies, Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, and the Wilson Center, among others.

Selected Publications:

Book

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.

- Ludwik Fleck Prize Finalist, Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)

Refereed Journal Articles

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2017). Superscribing Sustainability: The Production of China’s Urban Waterscapes. UPLanD-Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & Environmental Design, 2(3), 71-86.

Public Scholarship and Policy Reports

Jesse Rodenbiker. (Forthcoming) Boundary-Making in the South China Sea: A Geographical and Ecological Landscape. Geography Review.

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). Ecological Civilization Goes Global: China's Green Soft Power and South-South Environmental Initiatives. Understanding China Amid Change and Cooperation: 2022-2023 Wilson China Fellowship Report.

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023). China's Ecological Migration from the Ground Up. New Security Beat 6 (15).

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2022). High Stakes: China's Leadership in Global Biodiversity Conservation. China Environment Forum. 11 (3).

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2020). Hope for Vaquita Lies with Consumers. Dialogue Earth. (8) 6

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2015). Towards an Emancipatory Anthropocene: Climate Change and Everyday Life Human and Nature. (11) 11-17. (Chinese language)

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2015). Globalizing Hexigtan: The Spatial Anomalies of Making a Global Geopark. Human and Nature. (9) 22-27. (Chinese language)

Book Chapters

Jesse Rodenbiker. (Forthcoming). Ecological Civilization: A Technocratic Vision of Sustainability in Chinese Enviromental History: A Reader. Peter Lavelle and Brian Lande (Eds.). New York: Columbia University Press

Jesse Rodenbiker. Global China and Wildlife Trade: Impacts on Biodiversity, Marine Ecosystems, and Racialized Public Health Risks. (Forthcoming). The Sage Handbook on China's Environment. Chris Coggins and Yifei Li (Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press.

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2023) Political Ecologies of Urban-Rural Conservation Planning and Resettlement. Fulong Wu and Fangzhu Zhang (Eds.) Handbook on China's Urban Environmental Governance. London: Edward Elgar Press.

Woodworth, M. X.F. Ren, J. Rodenbiker, E. Santi, Y. Tan, L. Zhang, Y. Zhou. (2022). Researching China During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Stanley Brunn (Ed.) COVID-19 and Emerging World of ad-hoc Geographies. Springer Publishing. 2705-2721.

Jesse Rodenbiker. (2020). Sustainability as Environmental Justice: Uneven Inclusion into China's Ecological Cities. in Shades of Green: Notes on Eco-Civilisation. (Made in China Notebooks 1). Luigi Tomba and Olivier Krischer (Eds.). Canberra: Australia National University Press.

David Robinson
Phone: (848) 445-4741
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Title: Distinguished Professor
NJ State Climatologist
Office: LSH - room B230
Research Interests: My research interests run the spatial gamut from global to local, with an underlying theme being the development of a better understanding of the climate system.
Degrees: (Ph.D., Columbia)
ENVS Courses Taught: Earth Systems, The Global Climate System

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests:

I am an earth scientist, more specifically a physical geographer and climatologist. My research interests run the spatial gamut from global to local, with an underlying theme being the development of a better understanding of the climate system. The majority of my published research has focused on hemispheric and regional snow cover dynamics and interactions of snow cover with other climate elements. This includes maintaining an internationally-recognized database of Northern Hemisphere snow extent throughout the satellite era http://snowcover.org. This information is used in our Global Snow Lab's research endeavors, efforts of others, and in our contributions to national and international climate assessments.

As the New Jersey State Climatologist, I conduct research of an applied nature that focuses on the diverse weather and climate of the Garden State. This includes topics such as climate change, drought, flooding, and issues involving agriculture, transportation, public safety and commerce http://njclimate.org. The Office of the NJ State Climatologist also operates one of the most spatially dense observing networks in the nation. The NJ Weather and Climate Network http://njwx.org provides timely information to decision makers, the research community, and the general public.Finally, I have served on a number of national committees and occasionally publish on issues related to my interest in the collection and archiving of accurate climatic data.

Education:

Ph.D. 1984 Columbia University
M.S. 1981 Columbia University
B.S. 1977 Dickinson College

Students:

Natalie Teale, Jessica August

Page 2 of 8