Dr. Kyle Davis - Challenges and solutions for sustainable and resilient food-water systems
Overview
Sustainable food systems aim to provide sufficient and nutritious food while maximizing climate resilience and minimizing environmental impacts. Yet historical practices, notably the Green Revolution, prioritized the single objective to maximize production over other nutritional and environmental dimensions. With a focus on the food-water-climate nexus, my research explores ways to maintain humanity's achievements while overcoming past shortcomings of global food systems.
Bio
Dr. Davis is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Data Science at the University of Delaware (UD). His work focuses on food system sustainability and environmental change from local to national (India, Nigeria, China, the US) to global scales. His research employs data-driven mixed methods to quantify environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability and to explore food system solutions for improving incomes, nutrition, natural resource use, and climate adaptation. His other work investigates human-environment interactions related to: the socio-environmental effects of large-scale land investments; variability and shock propagation through food supply chains; and the relationship between human migration and global environmental change. Prior to joining UD in 2019, he was a Data Science Fellow and Earth Institute Fellow at Columbia University (New York) and a Nature Net Science Fellow with The Nature Conservancy. He earned his PhD in Environmental Sciences with a focus on Hydrology from the University of Virginia and is a proud graduate of UD (BS Biochemistry).