Kenneth R. Young

Interests

Biography

Kenneth Young's Ph.D. is from the Department of Geography, University of Colorado at Boulder. Previously he obtained a M.S. in botany (University of Florida) and a B.S. in ecology, ethology, and evolution (University of Illinois). He has spent extended periods in tropical countries, including research in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru, in addition to U.S. Peace Corps service in Guatemala. He came to the University of Texas in 2000, after being an assistant and associate professor in the University of Maryland Baltimore County for seven years.

Young teaches a wide range of courses in physical geography and human-environment interactions, including Biogeography, Climate Change, Comparative Ecosystems, Landscape Ecology, and the Natural Environment. He regularly teaches a topics graduate seminar in Biodiversity Conservation.

Kenneth Young does policy-relevant research that informs biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. He does this by linking biogeography and landscape ecology to questions of ecosystem dynamics and aspects of global environmental and socioeconomic change. He has worked in natural and utilized landscapes in tropical areas and aspires to understand the global tropics, especially as affected by humans. He studies protected areas in relation to conservation biology, to climate change, and to land use. Most recently he has been splitting his research efforts between high Andean landscapes and the tropical forests and floodplains of the western Amazon.

Selected Publications

Young, K.R. 2009. Andean land use and biodiversity: Humanized landscapes in a time of change. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 96, 492-507.

Sarkar, S., K. A. Crews-Meyer, K. R. Young, C. D. Kelley, and A. Moffett. 2009. A dynamic graph automata approach to modeling landscape change in the Andes and the Amazon. Environment and Planning B, Planning and Design 36, 300-318.

Young, K.R.  and B. León. 2009. Natural hazards in Peru: Causation and vulnerability. In E. Latrubesse (ed.). Natural Hazards and and Human-Exacerbated Disasters in South America. Developments in Earth Surface Processes Series. Elsevier, Amsterdam.

Young, K.R. 2008. Stasis and flux in long-inhabited locales: Change in rural Andean landscapes. Pp. 11-32 in A. Millington and W. Jepson (eds.). Land-Change Science in the Tropics: Changing Agricultural Landscapes. Springer, New York, NY.

Postigo, J., K. R. Young, and K. A. Crews. 2008. Change and continuity in a pastoralist community in the high Peruvian Andes. Human Ecology 36: 535-551.

McCleary, A.L., K. A. Crews-Meyer, and K. R. Young. 2008. Refining forest classifications in the western Amazon using an intra-annual multi-temporal approach. International Journal of Remote Sensing 29: 991-1006.

la Torre-Cuadros, M. de los Angeles, S. Herrando-Pérez, and K. R. Young. 2007. Diversity and structural patterns for tropical montane and premontane forests of central Peru, with an assessment of the use of higher-taxon surrogacy. Biodiversity and Conservation 16: 2965-2988.

Peralvo, M. R. Sierra, K. R. Young, and C. Ulloa Ulloa. 2007. Identification of biodiversity conservation priorities using predictive modeling: An application for the equatorial Pacific region of South America. Biodiversity and Conservation 16: 2649-2675.

Young, K.R. 2007. Causality of current environmental change in tropical landscapes. Geography Compass 1: 1299-1314.

Veblen, T.T., K.R. Young, and A.R. Orme, Editors. 2007. The Physical Geography of South America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Young, K.R. and B. Leon. 2007. Tree-line changes along the Andes: Implications of spatial patterns and dynamics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362, 263-272.

Kintz, D.B., K. R. Young, and K. A. Crews-Meyer. 2006. Implications of land use/land cover change in the buffer zone of a national park in the tropical Andes. Environmental Management 38: 238-252.

Young, K.R. and R.J. Aspinall. 2006. Kalaidoscoping landscapes, shifting perspectives. The Professional Geographer 58, 436-447.

Young, K.R. and K.A. Crews-Meyer. 2006. Guest editors of Focus section on Landscape Form, Process, and Function: Coalescing Geographic Frontiers. The Professional Geographer 58, 367-447.

Young, K.R. and J.K. Lipton. 2006. Adaptive governance and climate change in the tropical highlands of western South America. Climatic Change 78, 63-102.

Bush, M.B., B.C.S. Hansen, D.T. Rodbell, G.O. Seltzer, K.R. Young, B. Leon, M.B. Abbott, M.R. Silman, and W.D. Gosling. 2005. A 17,000-year history of Andean climate and vegetation change from Laguna de Chochos, Peru. Journal of Quaternary Science 20, 703-714.

Polk, M.H., K.R. Young and K.A. Crews-Meyer. 2005. Biodiversity conservation implications of landscape change in an urbanizing desert of southwestern Peru. Urban Ecosystems 8, 313-334.

Young, K.R. 2003. Genes and biogeographers: Incorporating a genetic perspective into biogeographical research. Physical Geography 24, 447-466.

Young, K.R., C. Ulloa Ulloa, J.L. Luteyn and S. Knapp. 2002. Guest Editors for Plant Evolution and Endemism in Andean South America. Botanical Review 68, 1-188.

Zimmerer, K.S. and K.R. Young, Editors. 1998. Nature's Geography: New Lessons for Conservation in Developing Countries. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

NIH Biosketch