Jean R. Francois is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Geography and Geospatial Sciences at Kansas State University. He received his master’s degree in Family, Youth, and Community Sciences from the University of Florida in 2019. His research primarily focuses on landscape complexity, agricultural production, and the sustainability of agricultural communities.

Dr. Katherine Nelson is an associate professor of sustainability in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Missouri. Her research interests include landscape diversity, agricultural adaptation, strategic retreat, vulnerability assessment, and scaling relationships. She leads the Sustainability of Communities and Agricultural Landscapes (SCALes) lab, which examines aspects of community and agricultural landscape sustainability, ranging from the equity of strategic retreat and policy implementation to the relationship between crop diversity and crop yields to rural sustainability assessment.

Dr. Emily Burchfield is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Emory University. Her work integrates social and environmental data to support transitions towards more sustainable, resilient, and just agricultural futures. She combines “big” geospatial data with “deep” qualitative and survey data to understand and support agricultural system transition at multiple scales.