Ken Sylvester
Interim Executive Director for ORED, Office of Research Director, Adjunct Research Associate Professor of History, College of Arts, Sciences and Education, The University of Michigan-Flint and Adjunct Research Associate Professor of Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research
- Email Ken Sylvester
- (810)766-6842
- CV (PDF)
BIO
Dr. Sylvester studies demographic and socioeconomic behavior in relation to environmental change. A historian by training, Sylvester uses census microdata, geo-spatial data, multivariate and simulation methods to study human-environment relationships, adaptive behavior, agrarian society and environmental impacts, mainly in western North America. Sylvester serves as PI and co-investigator on several awards (NIH, NSF, and SSHRC), including the recently funded “Sustaining Populations and Landscapes at Risk.” He also serves as incoming co-editor, with J. David Hacker, of the interdisciplinary journal Historical Methods.
- Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Marull, Joan , Cunfer, Geoff , Tello, Enric . 2019. A landscape ecology assessment of land-use change on the Great Plains-Denver (CO, USA) metropolitan edge. Regional Environmental Change
- Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Rhode, Paul W. 2017. Making Green Revolutions: Kansas Farms, Recovery, and the New Agriculture, 1918-1981. Agricultural History 91(3):342-368.
- Leonard, Susan Hautaniemi, Rhode, Paul W, Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Gutmann, Myron P., Brown, Daniel G., Cunningham, Angela R, Dykes, James , Little, Jani , Mikecz, Jeremy , Spielman, Seth . 2016. Migration in the 1930s: Beyond the Dust Bowl. Social Science History 40(4):707-740.
- Ken Sylvester, Gutmann, Myron P., Brown, Daniel G.. 2016. At the margins: agriculture, subsidies and the shifting fate of North America's native grassland. Population and Environment 37(3):362-390.
- Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Leonard, Susan Hautaniemi. 2015. Revisiting wealth on the American frontier: the distribution of land in Kansas, 1875-1940. Lives in Transition: Longitudinal Analysis from Historical Sources :165-186.
- Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Field, S A, Tucker, R P. 2015. Climate and North American History: The State of the Field. Cultural Dynamics of Climate Change and the Environment in Northern America :109-136.
- Ken Sylvester, Brown, Daniel G., Susan Leonard, Merchant, Emily , Hutchins, Meghan . 2015. Exploring agent-level calculations of risk and returns in relation to observed land-use changes in the US Great Plains, 1870-1940. Regional Environmental Change 15(2):301-315. PMCID: PMC4340090.
- Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Brown, Daniel G., Deane, Glenn D, Kornak, Rachel N. 2013. Land transitions in the American plains: Multilevel modeling of drivers of grassland conversion (1956-2006). Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 168:7-15.
- Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Maxwell, S . 2012. Identification of "ever-cropped" land (1984-2010) using Landsat annual maximum NDVI image composites: Southwestern Kansas case study. Remote Sensing of Environment 121:186-195. PMCID: PMC3298121.
- Sylvester, Kenneth Michael, Rupley, E A. 2012. Revising the Dust Bowl: High Above the Kansas Grasslands. Environmental History 17(3):603-633. PMCID: PMC4185197.