I am a mapmaker. I show old things in new ways. Mostly I do this by mapping the world's agriculture as a grad student in the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. The maps feed computer models that simulate how global environmental change affects ecosystem services for good or ill. I've also spent quite a bit of time with the ecological footprint. First as a research associate at the sustainability think-tank Redefining Progress and subsequently on the side, I devised a new way to calculate the ecological footprints of nations over the last few decades, and mapped them too.

How mapmaking becomes worldmaking intrigues me. (When it goes right we call it worldchanging.) More and more I'm looking into science and technology studies to get a better picture of how images of the world - from paper maps to abstract rules - remake the world into themselves. In the future, I hope to take this perspective to explore science policy and environmental governance. But dwelling at altitude can make you dizzy, so my newest hobbies are getting dirty in the garden and touring small parts of the Midwest.

Email Chad at clmonfreda@wisc.edu