Megan

Meacham

PhD

Researcher

megan.meacham@su.se

+46 707 417 450

@meganmeacham

RSS-link

Profile summary

  • Ecosystem services
  • Ecosystem service bundles
  • Multifunctionality
  • Biodiversity
  • Finance

Megan Meacham’s research focuses on how people use, manage and depend on nature.

Meacham is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, where she focuses on the benefits people receive from nature (ecosystem services) and how and where they are produced. Her recent work has demonstrated the importance of understanding the relationships among ecosystem services and managing for reoccurring sets of ecosystem services (bundles). In addition, Meacham uses the ecosystem service concept to show how biodiversity is underpinning the financial sector and how the financial sector is impacting biodiversity.

Meacham is the program manager of two research programs.

  1. Finance to Revive Biodiversity (FinBio). Funded by Mistra
  2. Advancing the research frontier of biosphere stewardship, a strategic research collaboration and postdoc program between the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, and the Natural Capital Project, Stanford University. Funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation

Meacham is the course leader and lecture for the course Ecosystem Service Assessments, a 4-credit course at Stockholm University.

Meacham completed her PhD at Stockholm University in Sustainability Science. Her PhD thesis was titled, “Social-ecological dynamics of ecosystem service bundles.” Meacham used the ecosystem service bundle concept to describe social-ecological landscapes within Sweden. She explored how social, geographic and ecological dynamics relate to ecosystem service bundles. She advanced the ecosystem service bundle approach by testing accessible data, feasible methods and expanding comparability with other assessments.

Meacham also holds a MSc degree in Ecosystem, Governance and Globalization (Stockholm University, 2009) and BSc degree in Economics (University of Wisconsin, 2006).

Meacham was previously the coordinator for the Program for Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) within Future Earth. She is still a member of PECS and collaborates with several other international projects.

Supervising

Bianca Voicu, co-supervising

Publications by Meacham, Megan

Aligning nature-based solutions with ecosystem services in the urban century

Journal / article | 2024

Roy P. Remme, Megan Meacham, Kara E. Pellowe, Erik Andersson, Anne D. Guerry, Benjamin Janke, Lingling Liu, Eric Lonsdorf, Meng Li, Yuanyuan Mao, Christopher Nootenboom, Tong Wu, Alexander P.E. van Oudenhoven. 2024. Aligning nature-based solutions with ecosystem services in the urban century. Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2024.101610

In an increasingly urbanized world, the concepts of ecosystem services and nature-based solutions can help tackle grand challenges. However, ambiguity in their definitions and in the relationship between the two concepts complicates comprehensive research efforts as well as their effective application in policy and planning in urban systems. This paper presents a framework to clarify and explicitly relate the two concepts, enh...

Mapping ecosystem services in Colombia: Analysis of synergies, trade-offs and bundles in environmental management

Journal / article | 2024

Aracely Burgos-Ayala, Amanda Jiménez-Aceituno, Megan Meacham, Daniel Rozas-Vásquez, María Mancilla García, Juan Rocha, Alexander Rincón-Ruíz. 2024. Mapping ecosystem services in Colombia: Analysis of synergies, trade-offs and bundles in environmental management. Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2024.101608

Ecosystem services (ES) have gained significant attention in recent years from the global environmental initiatives that involve science and policy. Multiple scholars have analyzed how ES are integrated with environmental policies, plans, and strategic assessments. However, there is a lack of information on how countries translate these policies, plans and assessments into concrete environmental management actions that integra...

The programme on ecosystem change and society (PECS) – a decade of deepening social-ecological research through a place-based focus

Journal / article | 2022

Norström, A., Agarwal, B., Balvanera, P., Baptiste, B., Bennett, E., Brondízio, E., Biggs, R., Campbell, B., Carpenter, S., Castilla, J., Castro, A., Cramer, W., Cumming, G., Felipe-Lucia, M., Fischer, J., Folke, C., DeFries, R., Gelcich, S., Groth, J., Ifejika Speranza, C., Jacobs, S., Hofmann, J., Hughes, T., Lam, D., Loos, J., Manyani, A., Martín-López, B., Meacham, M., Moersberger, H., Nagendra, H., Pereira, L., Polasky, S., Schoon, M., Schultz, L., Selomane, O., Spierenburg, M.. 2022. The programme on ecosystem change and society (PECS) – a decade of deepening social-ecological research through a place-based focus. Ecosystems and People. doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2133173

The Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) was established in 2011, and is now one of the major international social-ecological systems (SES) research networks. During this time, SES research has undergone a phase of rapid growth and has grown into an influential branch of sustainability science. In this Perspective, we argue that SES research has also deepened over the past decade, and helped to shed light on key di...

Advancing research on ecosystem service bundles for comparative assessments and synthesis

Journal / article | 2022

Meacham, M., Norström, A. V., Peterson, G. D., Andersson, E., Bennett, E.M., Biggs, O., Crouzat, E., Cord, A. F., Enfors, E., Felipe-Lucia, M. R., Fischer, J., Hamann, M., Hanspach, J., Hicks, C., Jacobs, S., Lavorel, S., Locatelli, B., Martín-López, B., Plieninger, T., Queiroz, C. 2022. Advancing research on ecosystem service bundles for comparative assessments and synthesis. Ecosystems and People. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2032356

Social-ecological interactions have been shown to generate interrelated and reoccurring sets of ecosystem services, also known as ecosystem service bundles. Given the potential utility of the bundles concept, along with the recent surge in interest it is timely to reflect on the concept, its current use and potential for the future. Based on our ecosystem service bundle experience, expertise, and ecosystem service bundle analy...