Aaron J Enriquez, PhD
Aaron Enriquez is a Research Economist in the Social and Economic Analysis Branch at the USGS Fort Collins Science Center. Broadly speaking, Aaron's research centers around the intersection of human and natural systems. His main areas of interest include the economics of wildlife, fisheries, and outdoor recreation, as well as the valuation of ecosystem goods and services.
Aaron's passion for environment and natural resource (ENR) research stems from an interdisciplinary background. He has received a B.S. in Biology, a B.S. in Economics, an M.S. in Economics and ENR, and a Ph.D. in Economics, all from the University of Wyoming. Aaron is particularly interested in combining bioeconomic modeling and nonmarket valuation to better capture feedback between economic and ecological systems. As a graduate student, he applied this style of approach to human-grizzly bear interactions in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. As a postdoc at the University of Alaska Anchorage, he estimated the nonmarket value of wild sockeye salmon using recreation permit data. Aaron has worked on many other ENR applications, including uncovering people's values for viewing individual wildlife species, determining people's willingness to pay to conserve wide-ranging wildlife, examining how people's risk perceptions influence their protective actions against wildlife and pests, and quantifying people's preferences for "ugly" agricultural produce.
