Rate My Professor Jonathan Salerno

Jonathan Salerno is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University’s Warner College of Natural Resources. He earned his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California, Davis in 2015, with a dissertation titled 'Human Behavior and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Systems: Mobility, Livelihoods, and Wildlife Conflict at Multiple Scales,' an M.S. in Ecology from the same university in 2012, and a B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and History from the University of Rochester in 2002. Prior to his appointment at Colorado State University, Salerno served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2016 to 2018. As director of the Salerno Lab, he investigates human adaptation to environmental changes, considering both social and biophysical aspects of the environment. His research addresses human-wildlife conflict, human mobility and land change, climate observation and responses, and cooperative norms in land management, with studies conducted in regions such as Tanzania, Uganda, and the American West.

Salerno’s contributions include securing funding as principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple National Science Foundation grants, such as those focused on climate services for smallholder farmers in Uganda and land system dynamics in southern Africa’s Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, as well as National Geographic Society grants examining food security and community resource management in the African Albertine Rift. He co-directs the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence and has received prestigious awards including the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship from 2010 to 2013 and the J. William Fulbright Student Award in 2014-2015. His influential publications feature 'Long-term evidence shows that crop-rotation diversification increases agricultural resilience to adverse growing conditions in North America' in One Earth (2020), 'Conserving large carnivores: dollars and fence' in Ecology Letters (2013), 'Mobile phone use is associated with higher smallholder agricultural productivity in Tanzania, East Africa' in PLoS ONE (2020), 'A cross-country analysis of climate shocks and smallholder food insecurity' in PLoS ONE (2018), and 'Wildlife impacts and vulnerable livelihoods in a transfrontier conservation landscape' in Conservation Biology (2020). Salerno’s work advances understanding of social-ecological systems and informs conservation strategies for human coexistence with wildlife amid global environmental shifts.