Dr. Mahadev Bhat is a distinguished university professor of natural resource economics in the Department of Earth and Environment and the Department of Economics at Florida International University (FIU), Miami, FL. He earned his PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and his MS in agricultural economics from the College of Agriculture, Dharwad, India.
His research focuses on economics and policy issues relating to natural resources, including ecosystem services, water resources, coastal and marine systems, and agriculture. He has produced over 380 scholarly contributions, including refereed journal articles, book chapters, technical reports, presentations, and invited lectures. Dr. Bhat has secured more than USD 25 million in competitive research funding from agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Bhat co-founded the agroecology program at FIU and led the development of a training and farm-start-up initiative for underserved farmers and veterans, all supported by more than 40 USDA grants. Three of these grants helped establish a multi-university consortium focused on training Hispanic students in South Florida and Puerto Rico. His honors include the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics’ Bernardo Aguilar Award (2019), the FIU Faculty Excellence Award for Research (2020), the FIU Presidential Excellence Award (2016), and the Soil and Water Conservation Society’s Berg Fellowship (1992).
Dr. Bhat has actively promoted Indian language and culture in the United States through over 30 years of volunteer service, value-based teaching, and artistic production/direction at local and national cultural organizations.
Dr. Bhat’s Fulbright-Nehru project is focusing on community-based and culturally rooted forest conservation strategies in India. The project is evaluating the ecosystem services provided by sacred forests and is developing policy pathways that integrate traditional knowledge system into sustainable forest management. He is conducting his research at the University of Agricultural Sciences’ College of Forestry at Sirsi and is also collaborating with the Indian Institute of Technology Dharwad and the Nature Environment and Wildlife Society, Kolkata. Further, he is comparing restoration experiences between the Florida Everglades and India’s Sundarbans to advance cross-regional insights into ecosystem management.