People

PLACES-FMV (CONUS) is a set of parcel-level estimates of the fair market value (FMV) of vacant lands in the contiguous United States (CONUS). The estimates are derived statistically from data on 1.3 million vacant land sales (2000-2021) using an ensemble of simple and scalable predictive models.

Boston University

PLACES Lab, Department of Earth and Environment:

  • Christoph Nolte (PI), assistant professor, chrnolte@bu.edu

  • Payal Shah, visiting researcher, pshah2@bu.edu

  • Emily French, graduate researcher

  • Gahyun Kim, graduate researcher

  • Cece Lagomarsino, undergraduate researcher

  • Ella Hinkelman, undergraduate researcher

  • Julianne Vaughan, undergraduate researcher

  • Katherine Anne, undergraduate researcher

  • Samantha Moroz, undergraduate researcher

Collaborator panel

The collaborator panel advises the research team in the development of the research. It includes experts in national-scale conservation planning and land value estimation from seven organizations (sorted by last name):

  • Paul Armsworth, Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

  • Wesley Burnett, Agricultural Economist, Economic Research Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture

  • Joe Fargione, Science Director, North America Region, The Nature Conservancy

  • Linda Hwang, Senior Director, Strategy and Innovation, The Trust for Public Land

  • Walter Jetz, Professor and Director, and Alexander Killion, Managing Director, Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, Yale University.

  • Andy Krause, Senior Manager, Research & Development for Zestimate, Zillow

  • Andrew Plantinga, Professor, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California - Santa Barbara

Code contributors

PLACES-FMV would not exist without the support of the following students at Boston University:

  • Adam Pollack, former BU PhD student, now: postdoc, Dartmouth College

  • Yuhe Chang, former BU MSc student, now: PhD student, Boston University

  • Shelby Sundquist, former BU undergraduate, now: PhD student, Northern Arizona University

  • Ido Kushner, former BU undergraduate, Boston University