Research Economist

Chris Mihiar

I build models and tools to understand how land use shapes our economic and environmental future.

View Research → Get in Touch

Current Focus

Where my research energy is concentrated right now

Natural Capital Accounting

Developing methodologies to measure and integrate the value of natural resources into national economic accounts.

Land-Use Change Modeling

Projecting how climate and economic factors drive transitions between forest, agriculture, and development.

Climate Adaptation Economics

Analyzing the economic dimensions of climate adaptation, particularly in forestry and land management.

Featured Work

Highlights from my research and tools

Journal Article Featured

Evaluating the Current Status of Agriculture-driven Deforestation Across Jurisdictional Scales in the United States Using Foundational, Federal Datasets

Katherine M. Renwick, Christopher W. Woodall, Christopher Mihiar, Lori T. Murray, Ricky Lewis, Peter C. Beeson • Environmental Research Letters • 2025

Quantifies agriculture-driven deforestation across US jurisdictions using federal datasets, providing a framework for monitoring forest-to-agriculture conversion at multiple scales.

Working Paper Featured

Toward a Timber Asset Account for the United States: A Pilot Account for Georgia

Sonia R. Bruck, Christopher Mihiar, Bin Mei, Thomas Brandeis, Matthew Chambers, Julie L. Hass, Scott Wentland, Travis Warziniack • Under review at Land Economics • 2025

Develops a timber asset account for Georgia using a novel discount timber price method to value standing timber stocks, estimating total timber assets at $5.9 billion including $244 million in pre-merchantable timber.

Open Source Tool

pyFIA: Python Tools for Forest Inventory Analysis

Streamlines access to and analysis of USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data.

Learn More → GitHub

AI-Powered Tool

askFIA: Natural Language Forest Data

AI-powered interface for querying USDA Forest Service FIA data. Ask questions in plain English, get forest answers -- powered by pyFIA and Claude.

Learn More →

View All Research →

About My Work

I'm a Research Economist at the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, where I work on natural capital accounting, land-use economics, and climate adaptation. My research helps policymakers understand the economic value of forests and how land use decisions today shape the resources future generations will inherit.

Learn More About Me