DrMatthew Clark

I'm generally interested in identifying mechanisms of change in social-ecological systems. These systems are characterized by thresholds, feedbacks between social and ecological processes, and other hallmarks of complexity, making the identification of causes and effects challenging. A key focus of my work is to hypothesize about causal processes using different types of theoretical models and interrogate these hypotheses using real-world observations. The goal of this research is to better understand the dynamics that shaped the current state of natural resources and the wellbeing of the communities that depend on them, as well as to predict the likely outcomes of future natural resource management decisions. To answer these questions, I rely on emerging methods for causal inference in complex systems.

The main methods I use to collect data are satellite-based remote sensing, household surveys, participatory mapping and experimental games, and accessing data from a variety of public and private sources, including the largest dataset on coral reef fisheries biomass and composition ever collated. I analyze these data using hierarchical Bayesian regression approaches and by assessing them as consistent with synthetic data produced with agent-based simulations and other theoretical models.