Mark teaches in the following courses:
Understanding knowledge exchange and participation: Much of Mark's research seeks to understand how knowledge exchange and stakeholder participation works, funded by the Rural Economy & Land Use (RELU) programme, the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the British Academy. By understanding these mechanisms, it is possible to design knowledge exchange processes that can more effectively deliver beneficial impacts from research. To find out more, visit www.sustainable-learning.org or read an RCUK case study about my approach to impact here.
Valuing Nature: Working with colleagues from over 20 institutions, Mark's research funded by NERC’s Valuing Nature Network, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the National Ecosystem Assessment is investigating how people value nature and how society can pay for the benefits we enjoy from nature, giving those who manage our countryside more incentives to manage the land sustainably.
Sustainable Uplands: Mark has led the £1.1 million Sustainable Uplands project funded by RELU, LWEC and the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), working with stakeholders to anticipate and adapt to rural change in upland environments across the UK. Evidence from this research fed directly into DEFRA's Natural Environment White Paper, and he is working with a team funded by DEFRA to develop Payments for Ecosystem Services in uplands and other systems. Evidence from this research has also been used by water companies to justify using land management to reduce water treatment costs. Find out more about Sustainable Uplands.
Combating desertification: Mark has also been working internationally to develop methods for assessing and combating desertification in collaboration with land managers. Working in twelve study sites around the world through the EU-funded DESIRE project, he has drawn upon a combination of local and scientific knowledge about indicators of land degradation and ways of preventing or reversing land degradation, scaling up local innovations to regional and national scale though a combination of biophysical and socio-economic modelling. In-depth work in Botswana during Mark's PhD has led to the production of land degradation assessment manuals in local languages, and has more recently fed into the development of a global knowledge management system for land degradation assessment under the auspices of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
Mark is an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in knowledge exchange, stakeholder participation and the value of nature. He obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds, where he was a Senior Lecturer until he became Director of the Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability at the University of Aberdeen. He now holds the innovative title of Professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Research at Birmingham City University, and has over 50 publications in peer-reviewed international journals.
His work has been covered by the Guardian, Radio 4, Radio Scotland and international media, and he has led current research projects and previous research projects worth over £10 million. He has designed and led over 50 workshops with end users of research in the UK and internationally, and has developed training in knowledge exchange and participatory methods for the UN Environmental Programme, DEFRA, the Scottish Government, the British Ecological Society and a range of UK universities.
In 2008 Mark became the first UK researcher to be awarded a joint Fellowship by the US Social Science Research Council and ESRC. In 2009 he was awarded the ESRC's Michael Young Prize, "rewarding the very best early career social scientists whose research has the potential to make a positive and far-reaching impact beyond academia".
In 2010 he was invited as a lead author on the "Socio-Economic and Knowledge Management" Working Group to provide a synthesis of current research and make recommendations to the 10th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. In 2011 the Sustainable Uplands project that he has coordinated since 2005 was voted "best example of impact" at the Rural Economy and Land Use programme's final conference - one of only two projects receiving awards out of over 100 investments.
In 2011, he became a member of the Programme Advisory Group for NERC's Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Sustainability programme. He was a contributing author to the upland chapter of the UK National Ecosytem assessment and is co-leading the Shared Values Work Package on the follow-on to the National Ecosystem Assessment. He is on the Roster of Experts in the second phase of DEFRA's Ecosystem Markets Taskforce.
In 2012 he helped to lead the development of Knowledge Exchange Guidelines for RCUK's Living with Environmental Change partnership.
Find out more about his work at Mark Reed's website.
Selected recent publications
Favretto, N. and Stringer, L.C. and Dougill, A.J. and Dallimer, M. and Perkins, J.S. and Reed, M.S. and Atlhopheng, J.R. and Mulale, K. (2016) Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to identify dryland ecosystem service trade-offs under different rangeland land uses. Ecosystem Services, 17. pp. 142-151. ISSN 22120416
Carter, Claudia and Reed, Mark S. (2016) Parks and climate change: Challenges to the protected area landscape and emerging policy and management responses. In: Parks of the Future: Protected Areas in Europe Challenging Regional and Global Change. Oekom, pp. 37-46. ISBN 978-3-86581-765-5
Tarrason, D. and Ravera, F. and Reed, M.S. and Dougill, A.J. and Gonzalez, L. (2016) Land degradation assessment through an ecosystem services lens: Integrating knowledge and methods in pastoral semi-arid systems. Journal of Arid Environments, 124. pp. 205-213. ISSN 01401963 (ISSN)
Reed, M.S. and Stringer, L.C. and Dougill, A.J. and Perkins, J.S. and Atlhopheng, J.R. and Mulale, K. and Favretto, N. (2015) Reorienting land degradation towards sustainable land management: Linking sustainable livelihoods with ecosystem services in rangeland systems. Journal of Environmental Management, 151. pp. 472-485. ISSN 03014797
Kenter, J.O. and O'Brien, L. and Hockley, N. and Ravenscroft, N. and Fazey, I. and Irvine, K.N. and Reed, M.S. and Christie, M. and Brady, E. and Bryce, R. and Church, A. and Cooper, N. and Davies, A. and Evely, A. and Everard, M. and Fish, R. and Fisher, J.A. and Jobstvogt, N. and Molloy, C. and Orchard-Webb, J. and Ranger, S. and Ryan, M. and Watson, V. and Williams, S. (2015) What are shared and social values of ecosystems? Ecological Economics, 111. pp. 86-99. ISSN 09218009
Reed, M.S. and Ceno, J.S.D. (2015) Mediation and conservation conflicts: From top-down to bottom-up. In: Conflicts in Conservation: Navigating Towards Solutions. Cambridge University Press, pp. 226-239. ISBN 9781139084574 (ISBN); 9781107017696 (ISBN)
Reed, M.S. and Stringer, L.C. and Dougill, A.J. and Perkins, J.S. and Atlhopheng, J.R. and Mulale, K. and Favretto, N. (2015) Reorienting land degradation towards sustainable land management: Linking sustainable livelihoods with ecosystem services in rangeland systems. Journal of Environmental Management, 151. pp. 472-485. ISSN 03014797 (ISSN)
Reed, M.S. (2014) ‘Formal institutions and their role in sustainable land management in Boteti, Botswana’, Land Degradation and Development vol. 25 pp. 80-91 (with Mulale K, Chanda R, Perkins JS, Magole L, Sebego RJ, Atlhopheng JR, and Mphinyane W)
Reed, M.S. (Eds) (2014) Global Peatland Restoration: demonstrating success IUCN UK National Committee Peatland Programme, Edinburgh. ISBN 978-0-9570572-3-4 (with Cris R, Buckmaster S and Bain C)
Reed, M.S. (in press) ‘How does the context and design of participatory decision-making processes affect their outcomes? Evidence from sustainable land management in global drylands’, Journal of Environmental Management (with L.C. Stringer, S. Valente and J. Newig)
Reed, M.S. (2014) ‘From framework to action: the DESIRE approach to combat desertification’, Environmental Management (with R. Hessel and colleagues)
Reed, M.S. (2014) ‘Participatory evaluation of monitoring and modelling of sustainable land management technologies in areas prone to land degradation’, Environmental Management (with L.C. Stringer and L. Fleskens)
Reed, M.S. and Bonn, A. and Evans, C. and Glenk, K. and Hansjurgens, B. (2014) Assessing and valuing peatland ecosystem services for sustainable management. Ecosystem Services, 9. pp. 1-4. ISSN 22120416
Reed, M.S. and Moxey, A. and Prager, K. and Hanley, N. and Skates, J. and Bonn, A. and Evans, C.D. and Glenk, K. and Thomson, K. (2014) Improving the link between payments and the provision of ecosystem services in agri-environment schemes. Ecosystem Services, 9. pp. 44-53. ISSN 22120416
Reed, M.S. (in press) ‘Making land management more sustainable: experience implementing a new methodological framework in Botswana’, Land Degradation and Development (with J.S. Perkins and 9 colleagues)
Reed, M.S. (in press) ‘A participatory approach for selecting sustainable land and water management options in drylands: a case study from SE Spain’, Journal of Environmental Management (with J. de Vente and 6 colleagues)
Reed, M.S. (in press) ‘Combining theoretical frameworks to assess livelihood vulnerability to climate change: a literature review’, Ecological Economics (with G. Podesta and 14 colleagues)
Reed, M. (2013) 'Participatory scenario development for environmental management: a methodological framework illustrated with experience from the UK uplands', Journal of Environmental Management vol. 128 pp. 345-362 (with J. Kenter and colleagues)
Reed, M. (2013) 'Anticipating and managing future trade-offs and complimentarities between ecosystem services', Ecology and Society vol. 18 no. 1 DOI: 10.5751/ES-04924-180105 (with K. Hubacek and colleagues)
Contributor to Scott, A.J. (lead author) (2013) ‘Disintegrated development at the rural-urban fringe: re-connecting spatial planning theory and practice’, Progress in Planning no. 83 pp. 1-52 (with 20 other RELU contributors)
Reed M.S. (2013) Habitat monitoring in the wider countryside: A case study on the pursuit of innovation in red deer management. Journal of Environmental Management 128: 779-786 (with Maffey, G. and colleagues)
Reed, M.S. (2013) ‘Knowledge management for land degradation monitoring and assessment: an analysis of contemporary thinking’, Land Degradation and Development vol. 24 pp. 307-322 (with I. Fazey and 31 colleagues)
Reed, M.S. (2013). Payments for ecosystem services: a best practice guide Defra, London (with S. Smith and 7 colleagues)
Reed, M.S. (2013) Developing place-based approaches for payments for ecosystem services, final technical report for DEFRA, URS, London (with T. Quick and 5 colleagues)
Reed, M. (2012) 'What does the future hold for semi-arid Mediterranean agro-systems? exploring cellular automata and agent-based trajectories of future land-use change', Applied Geography vol. 35 pp. 474-490 (with D. Nainggolan and colleagues)
Reed, M. (2012) 'Knowledge exchange: a review and research agenda for environmental management', Environmental Conservation DOI: 10.1017/S037689291200029X
Knowledge management for land degradation assessment
Monitoring land degradation and sustainable land management from local to global scales
What is social learning?
Latest outreach
Making good ideas infectious: a short film about knowledge exchange
Look Again music video
Sustainable Uplands documentary
The King’s Dream children’s book
Latest presentations
Taking the landscape scale to the extreme: Insights for planning from taking a social-ecological systems view
Making wicked problems game for planning
Participation, Mediation and Property
Social media for research impact
Working with end users of research
How to become an effective knowledge manager
How to do stakeholder analysis
Payments for Peatland Ecosystem Services
Participatory development – the case of land degradation in southern Africa
Current projects
Sustainable Uplands: transforming knowledge for upland change (RELU)
Assessing and valuing peatland ecosystem services for sustainable management (NERC Valuing Nature Network)
Involved: what makes stakeholder participation in environmental management work? (British Academy)
Ecocycles: Interacting impacts of land use and climate changes on ecosystem processes (NERC/EU)
Payments for Ecosystem Services best practice guidelines (DEFRA)
