Matthew Potts

Professor; S.J. Hall Chair in Forest Economics

Dept of Environmental Science, Policy & Management

Faculty URL

https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/matthew-potts

Research Group URL

http://www.pottsgroup.org/

Contact

mdpotts@berkeley.edu

(510) 642-5580

Search UC Berkeley Directory

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7442-3944

Update your profile

Research Expertise and Interest

carbon removal, climate change mitigation, nature based climate solutions, forest management, biofuels, plantation agriculture, land use planning, land use policy, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, tropical ecology, environmental economics, public impact research/scholarship, research practice partnership, community-based research partnerships

Research Description

Matthew Potts has a broad, interdisciplinary background with formal training in mathematics, ecology, and economics, and more than two decades of experience in resources management issues in low- and middle-income countries. His interdisciplinary lab focuses on nature and community based climate solutions as well as the co-production by human and natural systems of ecosystem services.

In the News

A photo shows a dense wall of pine trees on the edge of a mountain lake

How Indigenous Burning Shaped the Klamath’s Forests for a Millennia

A new study published online today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences combines scientific data with Indigenous oral histories and ecological knowledge to show how the cultural burning practices of the Native people of the Klamath Mountains — the Karuk and the Yurok tribes — helped shape the region’s forests for at least a millennia prior to European colonization.

Land degradation pushing planet towards sixth mass extinction

More than 100 experts from 45 countries have published a three-year study of the Earth’s land degradation, calling the problem “critical”.

Persistent methodological flaw undermines biodiversity conservation in tropical forests

What is the role of logging in tropical forests? How is biodiversity affected by this logging? The answers differ and are controversial among ecologists, environmentalists, and policymakers, and these disagreements have implications for the conservation of biodiversity.