Rheyna Laney
Professor, Global Studies Coordinator
Contact
Office
Stevenson Hall, Room 3603Office Hours
My research focuses on agriculture and the environment and on land-use and land-cover change. Much of that work has been conducted in Africa, I have been working in the Andapa Region of Madagascar, where two large nature reserves are protecting tropical forests rich in biodiversity from deforestation. These reserves are causing enormous land pressure in surrounding communities. Populations are rising, and since the reserves have cut off their frontier, farmers are forced to intensify their production. In this context, I have been investigating whether farmers have been able to find environmentally positive ways to intensify their agriculture, or whether they have been having difficulties, and are degrading their landscapes. I then use remotely sensed imagery to explore the specific land-cover changes that are associated with these different trajectories of agricultural change.
More recently, I have been exploring market-crop production in this region. The Andapa Region has been involved in coffee and vanilla production for over 75 years. Yet farmers continue to focus principally on their subsistence production. This is a puzzle for economists, who assume that farmers will seek to maximize profits from the market. My research explores the economic, cultural and social reasons why farmers are choosing not to participate in the market.
Over the last five years, I have been working in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California, which is a very important stopover on the Pacific Flyway. My research focuses on the decision among rice growers to participate or not in projects designed to improve waterbird habitat. It also examines the landscape impact of these projects through remote sensing imagery.
Education
Ph.D.—Geography, Clark University, 1999
M.A.— Geography, Clark University, 1995
B.A.— Environmental Science, University of California at Berkeley, 1986
Academic Interests
- Cultural and Political Ecology
- Agricultural Change and Development
- Land Use and Land Cover Change
- Remote Sensing
- Africa
Selected Publications & Presentations
Laney, R. In review. Assessing Additionality, Cost-effectiveness and Permanence Among Payment-for-Environmental-Service Programs Targeting Shorebird Habitat on Agricultural Working Lands. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment
Laney, R. and Moses, R., 2020. The adoption of wildlife practices through a payments-for-environmental-
Laney, R. Laney, R. and Turner II, B.L., 2015. The Persistence of Self-provisioning among Andapa, Malagasy Smallholders Human Ecology 43(6): 811-826.
Laney, R. 2004. A process-led approach to modeling land-change in agricultural landscapes: A case study from Madagascar. Special issue: From pattern to process: Landscape Fragmentation and the analysis of land use/land cover change - Edited by D.K. Munroe, J. Southworth and H. Nagendra Agricultural Ecosystems and Environment 101(2-3): 135-153.
Eastman, J. R. and R. Laney. 2002. Soft Classifiers for Sub-Pixel Evaluation: A Critical Evaluation. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 68(11):1149-1154.
Laney, R. 2002. Disaggregating Induced Intensification for Land Change Analysis: A case study from Madagascar. Annals of theAssociation of American Geographers 92(4):702-726.
Technical Reports and Documents
2016 Final Report to the California Fish and Wildlife: The long-term impacts of PES-supported agri-environmental projects in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California.
2013 Final Report to California Fish and Wildlife: A socio-economic and behavioral analysis of growers' decisions to adopt or reject conservation innovations sponsored through the NRCS Conservation Security Program
2009 Final Report and Data Repository Delivered to Miller Pacific Engineering Group: Reconstructing the history of gravel mining activity in the Yuba River through remote sensing analysis
2007 Final Report to the Federal Department of Fish and Wildlife: Analysis of habitat preferences of the Salt Water Harvest Mouse using Remote Sensing and GIS
Presentations
Laney, R. 2016. Assessing additionality of a Payment for Environmental Services Project in the Northern Sacramento Valley. San Francisco: Association of American Geographers, April 2016
Laney, R. 2013. A Typology of Rice Grower Attitudes towards Conservation. Los Angeles: Association of American Geographers, April 2013
Laney, R. 2013. The Adoption of Water-bird Friendly Management Practices in the Rice-growing Region of Northern California. Squaw Valley, CA: Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, September, 2013.
Laney, R. 2008. Verifying Land Change Models with Satellite Imagery: Accommodating Disparate Sources of Variability and Error. Boston: Association of American Geographers, March 2008
Laney, R. 2005. Applying Agricultural Change Theory to Global Land-use Land-cover Change Theory, Graduate Studies Forum in Geography, U.C. Davis, May 2005.
Laney, R. 2004. Reviving the Forgotten Agrarian Question in Andapa, Madagascar. Philadelphia: Association of American, Geographers, April 2004
Laney, R. 2003. Farmer profiling: Identifying forces and factors driving agricultural change in Madagascar 's vulnerable landscapes. New Orleans: Association of American Geographers, March 2003
Laney, R. 2001. Scale Blindness and Misleading Debates In Agricultural Change Theory. New York : Association of American Geographers, February 2001.
Laney, R. 2000. The “Fit” with African Land Use Patterns: Household surveys, multi-spectral image classification, spatial aggregation of land use/cover classes, and their translation with LCCS. Invited paper, Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, Focus 1 Workshop: Meeting in the Middle, October 16-21, 2000, Italy.
Laney, R. 2000. Panel Presentation: "Reflections on Cultural/Political Ecology II: Which Direction Now?" Pittsburgh: Association of American Geographers, April 2000.
Laney, R. 2000. Using Remotely Sensed Data in Agricultural Change Research: A Critical Assessment. Pittsburgh: Association of American Geographers, April 2000.