Holly K. Gibbs

Geographer Holly Gibbs is the Gaylord A. Nelson Distinguished Chair in Integrated Environmental Studies and professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is also the Directory of the Global Land Use and Environment Lab (GLUE),. Her research focuses on one of the defining sustainability challenges of our time: how to meet growing demand for food and commodities while conserving forests, biodiversity, water resources, and the climate. At GLUE, she leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists, economists, GIS analysts, cartographers, and student researchers working to understand how and why people use land and how those decisions shape environmental and social outcomes around the world.

Trained as a physical scientist, Gibbs has built her career at the intersection of land system science, environmental policy, globalization, and sustainability. She has pioneered innovative approaches that integrate satellite imagery, AI, spatial analysis, econometrics, and large-scale datasets with field-based social and biophysical research. Her work has advanced understanding of the drivers, patterns, and consequences of land-use change at local to global scales, with particular emphasis on tropical deforestation in Brazil and agricultural expansion and private lands conservation in the United States. A major focus of Gibbs' research is understanding how policies and market interventions influence land-use decisions. Gibbs also studies how private landowners–from ranchers and farmers to suburban homeowners–can contribute to conservation, biodiversity, and climate goals.

Before joining UW–Madison, Gibbs was a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow in Stanford University's Program on Food Security and Environment. She earned her Ph.D. from UW–Madison's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), supported by a U.S. Department of Energy Global Change Environmental Fellowship. Earlier in her career, she led remote sensing and GIS research on global carbon and water cycle projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She holds a B.S. with Distinction in Natural Resources and an M.S. in Environmental Science from The Ohio State University.