Dan Brown

  • Director and Professor
    • 206-685-1928
  • Visit Dan's website

    • Dan Brown

    • Director and Professor

    Research areas

    GIS, remote sensing, spatial modeling; land-use and land-cover dynamics; linking landscape patterns with ecological and social processes

    B.A. Geoenvironmental Studies, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
    M.A. Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    Ph.D. Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    Dan Brown is not currently accepting graduate students. 

    Current Sponsored Projects

    • Land Transactions and Investments: Impacts on Agricultural Production, Ecosystem Services, and Food-Energy Security
      The project will generate new data that will be available for public use by other scholars and researchers, train scientists in the United States and build greater research capacity among international collaborators, and produce findings that will hold practical interest for decision makers in government agencies, NGOs, and donor organizations.
    • Large-Scale Land Transactions as Drivers of Land-Cover Change in Sub-Saharan Africa
      This project will synthesize available remotely sensed and other information, complemented with targeted new data collection, to investigate the impacts of recent large-scale land transactions.
    • Leadership, Coordination, and Administrative Oversight for the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (PNW CESU)
      This project is a continuing collaboration between UW and NPS to support administrative functions of the PNW CESU and GB CESU including public outreach and development of financial assistance agreements for a wide variety of technical, research, and educational projects relevant to the mission of the CESU network.
    • McIntire-Stennis
      Areas currently supported include analysis of patterns of structural, functional and composition development of forest ecosystems; managing threatened and endangered mammalian species on human-altered landscapes; and novel approaches to ecological restoration, climate change mitigation.
    • Showy Stickseed Common Garden Study and Outplanting
      Washington Rare Plant Care and Conservation proposes to continue with outplanting trials of H. venusta to augment the existing population and develop effective methods for establishing self-sustaining populations.
    • BLM Rare Plant
      The Bureau of Land Management has partnered with the University of Washington for ten years on the long-term conservation and management of rare and sensitive plant species in the Pacific Northwest. This has included the collection and long term storage of rare plant seed in the Miller Seed vault housed at the University of Washington in order to assist them in meeting their mission of conserving Washington’s native rare plants through methods including ex situ conservation, rare plant monitoring, reintroduction, and education.

    Selected publications

    Allington, G.R.H., Li, W., and Brown, D.G. 2017. Urbanization and environmental policy effects on the future availability of grazing resources on the Mongolian Plateau: Modeling socio-environmental system dynamics. Environmental Science and Policy, 68: 35-46.

    Xu, H., Brown, D.G., Moore, M.R., and Currie, W.C. 2017. Optimizing spatial land management to balance water quality and economic returns in a Lake Erie watershed. Ecological Economics 145C: 104-114.

    Currie, W.S., Kiger, S., Nassauer, J.I., Hutchins, M., Marshall, L.L., Brown, D.G., Riolo, R.L., and Robinson, D.T. 2016. Multi-scale heterogeneity in vegetation and soil carbon in exurban residential land in Southeastern Michigan. Ecological Applications 26(5):1421-1436.

    Taylor, J.J., Lepczyk, C.A., and Brown, D.G. 2016. Patch and matrix level influences on forest birds at the rural-urban interface. Landscape Ecology 31(5): 1005-1020.

    Tian, Q., Holland, J.H., Brown, D.G. 2016. Social and economic impacts of subsidy policies on rural development in the Poyang Lake Region, China: insights from an agent-based model. Agricultural Systems 148: 12-27.