Please join us for a seminar with Dr. Patrick Lloyd-Smith, Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Saskatchewan. The presentation will be on Assessing Ecological Infrastructure Investments in the Panama Canal Watershed. 

Ecosystems are infrastructure that provide beneficial services to people. Changing ecosystems to enhance services are investments that carry a cost. For ecological infrastructure to play a serious role in society’s infrastructure portfolio, ecological infrastructure investment projects must be assessed beforehand and compared to alternative gray infrastructure investments. We illustrate ecological infrastructure is neither a panacea nor pipe dream by merging natural and social science in an application to the Panama Canal Watershed. Ecological infrastructure can play a targeted role in the Panama Canal Watershed, but is unlikely to be price competitive at the scale required to manage water for the canal. Physical and social constraints limit the ability to acquire ecological infrastructure, which is a barrier to scaling up ecological infrastructure.

The seminar takes place on May 22 at 12 pm CST in 1261 NHRC (seminar room).