Dr. Tanaka’s specialty is Resource and Environmental Economics and his current research interests include the economic effects of livestock grazing management practices in riparian areas and public land policy and economic issues surrounding rangeland sustainability and rural communities. For SageSTEP, Dr. Tanaka will help lead the development of ranch level models to determine the economic impact of changing seasons of use and loss of forage resources (and development of alternative forage resources) in response to alternative land management strategies over time; refine ranch-level economic models by adding environmental components (weather, wildlife trade-offs, etc.) to the analysis; and work with range and fire ecologists, rural sociologists, regional economists, natural resource economists (non-market valuation), land managers and others to determine the policy implications of alternative land management strategies for juniper- and sagebrush-dominated rangelands.
