Landon Yoder joined the O’Neill School as an assistant professor in 2019 after two years as a post-doctoral fellow on intensively managed landscapes at IU. He is trained as a human-environment geographer and focuses on how farmers, government, and society cooperate to navigate tradeoffs between agricultural production and conservation, with a focus on water quality. His work combines both social and natural science data and spatial analysis to examine how biophysical conditions, social dynamics, and institutional arrangements jointly influence environmental change.
His research has demonstrated the important effects of joint legal compliance and public monitoring data in promoting knowledge exchanges and drawing on social norms to promote the adoption of conservation practices in farming communities. His current research is focused on collaborative watershed governance among local governments in Iowa and cover crop adoption by farmers in Indiana.
Prior to pursuing an academic career, Yoder worked as an editor with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C., and volunteered with the Peace Corps as a community development worker in St. Lucia.
Yoder earned his Ph.D. in geography and his MPA with a focus on economic development and policy analysis from Indiana University. At the undergraduate level, he studied history at Goshen College.
