Dr. Kenneth Young does policy-relevant research that informs biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. He does this by linking biogeography and landscape ecology to questions of ecosystem dynamics and aspects of global environmental and socioeconomic change. He has worked in natural and utilized landscapes in tropical areas and aspires to understand the global tropics, especially as affected by humans. He studies protected areas in relation to conservation biology, to climate change, and to land use. Most recently he has been splitting his research efforts between high Andean landscapes and the tropical forests and floodplains of the western Amazon. He taught courses on physical geography and human-environment interactions, including Anthropocene, Biogeography, Climate Change, Comparative Ecosystems, Landscape Ecology, and the Natural Environment