Ecotrust Expert Bios
Dr. Matt Weber
Economic Analyst
Ecotrust, Portland, Oregon
503-467-0808
Ecotrust projects of special interest:
Economics for Equity and the Environment (E3 Network), Farm to School (Abernethy Kitchen Project; Kaiser Foundation), Ecotrust Forests LLC, Green Buildings, Ecosystem Services Markets, Sustainable Carbon Project, Yurok Forestry Management, California Marine Life Protection Act.
Areas of professional expertise:
Nonmarket valuation, ecosystem services, hydrology, water resources management and water conservation, system dynamics, socioeconomics of fishery regulations, carbon offsets, forest management.
Dr. Matt Weber is an Economic Analyst in Ecotrust's Knowledge Systems program. Working in this capacity since August 2007, he provides scientific research and analysis for projects in all of Ecotrust's program areas.
Weber also serves as staff support for Economics for Equity and the Environment (E3 Network). E3 Network promotes a vision of an engaged, practical economics, in which an understanding of social equity and environmental protection cannot be separated. Weber helps to further E3 Network's mission through website development, information management and public outreach.
Working with Ecotrust's Farm to School program, Weber uses quantifiable indices to assess projects, such as school profit and loss; changes in student Average Daily Participation rates in the National School Lunch Program; local procurement of food and supply chain transparency; and student-surveyed fruit and vegetable preferences. Weber helped draft an article documenting the challenges Ecotrust and Portland Public Schools faced in tracing the origin of school food supplies and establishing a local procurement baseline. Weber worked on the 2006-2007 assessment for the Abernethy Kitchen project in which school food is prepared onsite – an anomaly in the present-day school food era. He is currently working with the Portland Public Schools and Gervais School districts to finalize evaluation strategies in connection with the Kaiser Foundation project, which will fund an additional seven cents for school lunches in those districts for a study period in the 2008-2009 school year.
In assistance of the California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, Weber conducted a socioeconomic analysis of fishery regulation options for the north central coast of California. Impacts to port group regions and individual fishermen were both considered. Regulation options are the result of a public process and are used by the Marine Life Protection Act Science Advisory Team in advising the Department of Fish and Game's policy decisions. This process will be repeated for California's central coast.
Weber conducts background research to support Ecotrust Forests LLC investor relations and is working to translate this research for their website, where the information will be publicly accessible and updated quarterly. Forest research topics include demand forecasting, biofuels, the carbon market, and market and nonmarket benefits of long-rotation forestry.
Prior to joining Ecotrust, Weber worked for the Arizona Department of Water Resources from 2000 to 2002, where he led the municipal water conservation program. He has also worked as a private environmental consultant for water resources management in Arizona and as an independent contractor installing permaculture systems focused on rainwater harvesting and graywater utilization.
Weber received his Ph.D. in Hydrology and a minor in Agricultural Economics from the University of Arizona in 2007. His undergraduate degree is in Environmental Sciences, with a minor in Economics, from the University of Virginia. Weber is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and has been a National Science Foundation Trainee and a Sandia National Labs Fellow.
For his master's thesis project, Weber researched the incongruity between compartmentalized systems of water law and the interconnections of the hydrologic cycle. The focus case study was the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem, where water quality targets of endangered fish are posed against municipal and agricultural water uses. Water trading is explored as a partial solution, contingent upon California adopting a water law system in which surface water and groundwater are not separated but seen as a single resource.
Weber's dissertation research documented society's value of riparian areas in the southwestern U.S. One case study was a recreational use value study of Aravaipa Creek, AZ, a perennial stream in the Sonoran Desert, using a travel cost model. The second case study was original survey research for use and non-use values for restoration of the Rio Grande corridor in Albuquerque, NM, using both choice experiment and contingent valuation methodologies. These results were combined with other published valuation results into a Riparian Value Dynamic Simulation Model, taking a system dynamics view of the interrelationships between water resources management and society value.
Publications include:
Weber, M., and S. Stewart. Public Valuation of River Restoration Strategies for the Middle Rio Grande. Restoration Ecology, in press.
Weber, M. Riparian Valuation in the Southwestern United States. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Arizona, 146 pp, 2007.
Weber, M., and R. Berrens. Value of Instream Recreation in the Sonoran Desert, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 132(1), 2006.
Weber, M. California's Bay-Delta Dilemma: A hydrologic, legal, and economic investigation. MS Thesis, University of Arizona, 233 pp, 1997.
Related Web links:
Ecotrust's Knowledge Systems: www.ecotrust.org/knowledgesystems
Ecotrust Food & Farms: www.ecotrust.org/foodfarms
Ecotrust Forests LLC: www.ecotrust.org/foodfarms
Economics for Equity and the Environment: www.e3network.org
