Bonnie L. Keeler

325 Learning and Environmental Sciences Building
Institute on the Environment
University of Minnesota
651-353-9294

Bonnie Keeler is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota where she is affiliated with the Institute on the Environment and the Natural Capital Project.  Bonnie’s research is on the assessment and valuation of ecosystem services, which are the goods and services provided by natural systems that enhance human well-being.  She uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatially-explicit models to evaluate how different policies, actions, or decisions affect the provision of ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water quality, and biodiversity.  She then couples these ecological models with tools from economics to estimate the value of changes in ecosystem services.

As part of her dissertation research Bonnie developed a framework for valuing water quality-related services through integrated biophysical and economic models.  Currently she is applying this framework to case studies in land use change in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.  Bonnie is also involved in projects assessing the environmental and economic consequences of bioenergy production in the U.S in collaboration with the Hill Lab.  Additional research interests include metrics of sustainability, social costs of reactive nitrogen pollution, and spatial decision support tools to assist land use decision-making.

Before starting her Ph.D. program, Bonnie was a visiting instructor at Hamline University, a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory, and a research associate at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment.

View Bonnie's CV.

Portrait: Bonnie Keeler.