Associated Senior Research Scientist (PhD in Geography and Sustainable Development)
Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland
Mittelstrasse 43
3012Bern
Switzerland
Jorge has a background in geography, history and African studies, and over the past 9 years has conducted research on rural-urban linkages and migration in Senegal, and (more extensively) on land-use change in and around protected areas in diverse regions of Madagascar. His recently concluded (in May 2020) research within the ‘Managing Telecoupled Landscapes’ project focused on exploring the implications of telecoupled land-use change for the supply of ecosystem services in northeastern Madagascar, and how these dynamics affect local well-being. He combined remote sensing and GIS methods with a participatory approach to assess land-use change in his four research sites. He further used qualitative methods to explore the relation between human well-being and supply of ecosystems services. In addition, he used modelling tools to investigate the spatially-explicit trade-offs and synergies in ecosystem services supply emerging from land-use change. Among other research interests, Jorge is particularly keen in understanding the influence of climatic extremes, as drought and cyclones, on land-use change, and to illuminate its implications for local socio-ecological resilience and vulnerability.
Themes
Telecoupling of land use systems, Land governance, Land change trade-offs for ecosystem services and biodiversity , Land management systems, Urban-rural interactions, Land use and conflict
A new paper in Landscape Ecology examined how studying the Covid-19 pandemic's severe impacts on land users and landscapes around the world allow a better understanding of how global shocks, cascading disruptions, and reconnections influence contemporary land systems. The paper grew out of a collaboration between multiple GLP Working Groups.
A new article in People and Nature that grew out of discussions at GLP's 2019 Open Science Meeting in Bern looks at what happens after shifting cultivation and finds eight transitions with varied consequences for people and nature.
In this article, the researchers applied a network lens to reveal how visuals have been used in the scientific literature to portray telecoupling phenomena. Based on this, they critically reflect on current visualization practices in telecoupling research, as well as the underlying mental models that they represent. Finally, they provide practical recommendations for the development and use of visualizations to communicate knowledge on cross-scale socio-ecological interactions.
A group of GLP Members published this piece in the Journal of Land Use Science, highlighting the potential of incorporating elements of environmental justice scholarship into the evolving telecoupling framework that focuses on distant interactions in land systems.
