jgephart
Main profile
Jessica’s research focuses on the feedbacks between increasingly globalized food systems and the environment, with an emphasis on seafood systems. She brings together international trade data and environmental impact analysis to examine both the impacts of food production on the environment, as well as the impacts of environmental shocks on food production and trade. Her research projects range from examining the environmental impacts of diets to case studies of the local to global consequences of environmental shocks to seafood production.
Throughout her research, Jessica has established collaborations with numerous interdisciplinary and international teams. She received fellowships to collaborate with researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the Stockholm Resilience Centre and has participated in working groups and workshops at SESYNC, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Throughout her research and collaborations, Jessica’s work aims to identify opportunities to improve sustainability and resilience within the increasingly globalized food system.Jessica has also been involved in a range of interdisciplinary projects addressing water use for food production, multi-dimensional footprint analysis, and resilience within the global food trade system. Within the area of water resources, she has worked on teams to evaluate the efficacy of water markets at responding to water scarcity, quantify the water resource impacts of Sri Lanka’s self-sufficiency goals, and review water use concepts in aquaculture. Since, the environmental impacts of food production extend beyond water use, she worked with a group of researchers to develop a multi-footprint labelling scheme, estimate the efficiency improvements needed to meet the demands of a growing population with changing diets, and identify diets minimizing environmental footprints while meeting nutrient requirements. In order to assess resilience within the broader global food trade system, she part of a SESYNC team applying crop models, resilience theory, and network analysis to evaluate existing buffers in the system and vulnerabilities to shocks in the trade network.
Cohort: 2016
