I study the sustainability of ecological-social system, addressing questions of how ecosystems change through time and how people interact with natural resources. After working on Arctic system science for 15 years, I now work primarily in two domains: sustainable urban systems (Boston), and water resource management (New England and Africa). In both cases I collaborate with teams of scientists and stakeholders to develop holistic understandings of complex system dynamics. My contribution to projects usually involves intellectual synthesis and often includes the development of dynamic computer simulation models using rule-based approaches and/or quantitative ecological analyses.