About

Chris Golden is an ecologist and epidemiologist interested in the interface of ecosystem service provisioning and human health, specifically in the context of global trends in biodiversity loss and ecosystem transformation. He received an AB in environmental conservation with special concentrations from Harvard College in 2005, an MPH in epidemiology in 2010, and his PhD in environmental science, policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley in 2011. As an Environmental Fellow, Chris worked with Walter Willett at the Harvard School of Public Health and Sam Myers at Harvard Medical School to study the human health impacts of ecosystem services. Since 1999, he has been conducting ecological and public health research in Madagascar and is fluent in several local dialects of Malagasy. His research broadly focuses on local people's dependence on natural resources for obtaining adequate health, leading to studies on wildlife consumption and the incidence of anemia, as well as the importance of botanical ethnomedicines and geophagy to local health. He is aiming to expand the geographic scale and depth of this research through his collaboration with the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology
• Economics
• Fishery
• Natural resource economics
• Political Science
• Environmental science
• Business
• Geography
• Economic growth
• Environmental health
• Environmental resource management
• Agricultural economics
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Food science
• Paleontology
• Mathematics
• Biotechnology
• Environmental planning
• Gerontology

Selected publications

• Seasonality of fruiting phenology, hunting behaviour and taste preferences in Madagascar's Makira Protected Area

  People and Nature · 2026-03-09

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract For many people around the world, especially in Indigenous communities, seasonal changes affect the availability and desirability of different types of food. Assessing the relationship between seasonality, sociocultural preferences and hunting patterns is vital for understanding how these populations harness seasonal food production dynamics to create dietary resilience. In Madagascar's Makira Protected Area, local residents rely on hunting wild animals for nutrition. However, many of the species that they hunt are threatened due to a combination of pressures, including from hunting, habitat loss and climate change. To protect these species and meet the needs of local people, understanding the drivers of hunting practices is critical. Building on social–ecological systems theory and a biocultural calendar framework, we combined multiple data sources to analyse the interplay between wild animal population dynamics, availability of food resources for animals, hunting effort and catch and people's stated taste preferences among wildlife species by season throughout the year. We found no significant correlation between the estimated density of species and hunting success. However, we found that peak snare hunting effort occurred in April, several months after maximum fruit availability and coinciding with the period when local people reported that frugivorous lemurs tasted the best. Hunting success for frugivorous lemurs also showed a strong seasonal trend, peaking in April. Catch rates of animals with other diet types exhibited less seasonality, but respondents still indicated a preference for eating various species during April–May. Survey data indicate a clear taste preference for frugivorous lemurs over animals with other diet types (such as omnivores, carnivores, or folivores). Human taste preferences for frugivorous lemurs also showed the strongest seasonality. Our findings support the hypothesis that hunters pursue frugivorous lemurs when catch success may be more likely, which coincides with the time when they taste best, possibly due to the animals' recent fruit consumption. This highlights the complex relationships between ecological dynamics, human preferences and hunting practices in the Makira Protected Area. Understanding these interactions, while also considering alternative explanations, can inform effective conservation and food security strategies that consider both wildlife protection and the nutritional needs of local communities. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

  PublisherDOI

• Perspective: Nutrient bioavailability is the missing ingredient connecting food systems to nutrition security and environmental sustainability

  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition · 2026-02-28

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Increasing attention has focused on the capacity of current global food systems to provide accessible, affordable, and sustainable food to a growing human population, particularly amid ongoing climate and environmental changes. Concerns about the dysfunction of the global food system have led to the development of several initiatives to estimate current and predict future global nutrient supplies based on various climate, production, and demand scenarios. Yet none adequately accounts for differences in nutrient bioavailability across food groups. As nutrient bioavailability varies substantially between plant-source foods (PSFs) and animal-source foods (ASFs), accounting for these differences has important implications for global nutrient supplies and the environmental costs associated with their production. In this perspective, we highlight the variability in estimated bioavailabity across PSFs and ASFs for 27 key nutrients and the limited accounting for bioavailability in major studies and nutrition recommendations. We conclude with a discussion of current best practices, highlighting avenues for future research to account for bioavailability and to more accurately evaluate and propose nutritionally adequate diets. This perspective suggests that, although existing data limitations should not preclude food systems researchers from accounting for bioavailability, a concerted effort is needed to develop more consistent and representative estimates of bioavailability across a variety of nutrients.

  PublisherDOI

• Psychometric properties of the culturally adapted 10-item Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-10-SW) anxiety subscale for southwestern Madagascar

  Cambridge Prisms Global Mental Health · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Mental health conditions, including anxiety disorders, are a major cause of morbidity across Sub-Saharan Africa. There are scarce mental health resources and providers in Madagascar, which substantiates a need for clear and accessible assessment tools for assessing mental health conditions. Yet, before this study, there were no validated scales to measure anxiety disorder symptoms in Madagascar. We assessed the psychometric properties of the culturally adapted 10-item Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-10-SW) anxiety subscale in the Bay of Ranobe region, in southwestern Madagascar. The study participants were part of the ongoing HIARA cohort study. The HSCL-10-SW includes the original HSCL-10 anxiety subscale in addition to three culturally relevant items that were derived through qualitative research: irritability , lost in thoughts/overthinking and forgetfulness. We administered the HSCL-10-SW to 809 participants (41.2% males) aged 16 years (mean age 36.9) and above in October 2023. Our exploratory factor analysis supported a two-factor structure: Fear Anxiety and Cognitive-Somatic Anxiety. We found discriminant validity between Fear anxiety and Depression factors. Although the HSCL-10-SW demonstrated acceptable psychometric validity, we suggest that additional qualitative studies should be conducted to explore the local conceptualization of anxiety disorders in southwestern Madagascar.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Aquatic Food Composition Database

  Harvard Dataverse · 2026-05-01 · 10 citations

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  <hr>Welcome to the Aquatic Food Composition Database (AFCD)!</hr> This database assembles existing nutrient composition data for aquatic food species, comprising hundreds of nutrients including minerals, vitamins, and fatty acids from 3,558 aquatic food taxa. These data originate from national food composition tables (FCT) and international datasets from FAO that were in machine-readable formats, as well as from peer reviewed journal articles extracted from a systematic literature review of Web of Science in 2020. A second review focused on species in the Western and Central Pacific in 2023. Sources were excluded from AFCD if the scientific name of the organism was not mentioned, they only assessed fish oil or processed seafood products containing other ingredients, or they were part of an experimental trial. The full list of included sources can be found in supplementary file afcd_references.xlsx. Data is processed, harmonized and compiled on Github (https://github.com/Aquatic-Food-Composition-Database/aquatic_foods_nutrient_database). New and updated data are periodically added in this repository. Therefore, summary and regional values may vary, and species-nutrient observations may differ in the future. <strong>Versioned releases for this work remain available here on Dataverse. Current Version: 5.0</strong> Zamborain-Mason, Jessica*; Marwaha, Nisha*; Koehn, J. Zachary*; Viana, Daniel; Hazen, Lucie; Zhang, Angela; Cornell, Christina; Free, Christopher M.; Fairfield, William D.; Vaitla, Bapu; DeSisto, Camille; Kelahan, Heather; Fiorella, Kathryn J.; Kjellevold, Marian; Thilsted, Shakuntala H., Elsler, Laura; Tapera, Tinashe M., Golden, Christopher D. 2026, "Aquatic Food Composition Database", doi:10.7910/DVN/KI0NYM Harvard Dataverse, v5.0, AFCD.CSV. (*indicates joint first co-authorship) Please contact us if you are requesting access to the <a href="https://github.com/Aquatic-Food-Composition-Database/aquatic_foods_nutrient_database">GitHub Repository</a> CHANGELOG: v4.0 - Introduced targets-based R pipeline - Now uses semantic versioning for file naming instead of date-based filenames v5.0 - Adds helpful up-to-date data dictionary, README, and metadata files

  PublisherDOI

• Exported and retained micronutrients from Indian Ocean fisheries

  Environmental Research Food Systems · 2026-05-07

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Seafood is a vital source of micronutrients in the Indian Ocean region, a place where nutritional security is highly variable among individual countries. Here, there is an urgent need to address nutritional security and promote equitable distribution of marine resources, but little is known about seafood-derived micronutrients distribution. This study analyses seafood trade dynamics in the Indian Ocean from 2016 to 2019 to determine how they influence the region’s role in global and regional nutritional security. We leverage the Aquatic Resources Trade in Species database and integrate it with nutritional data from the Aquatic Foods Composition Database to quantify the sources and distribution of seven seafood-derived micronutrients, disaggregating by 15 taxonomic groups. We found that 12% of the total edible micronutrient supply caught by Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) countries in the Indian Ocean is exported out of the region, while the remainder stays within the region, either traded between IOR countries (7% of the total micronutrient supply), or retained domestically (81%). Yet the proportions retained or exported differ markedly among countries, with Bangladesh retaining over 95% of the micronutrients from its large catches, while the Maldives exports up to 86% of its micronutrient supply. IOR countries with severe rates of inadequate micronutrient intake and low to medium human development index (HDI) supply 40%–60% of total micronutrient exports respectively. These micronutrients flow primarily to populations that experience comparatively less severe levels of inadequate micronutrient intake and to high and very high HDI countries, both out of and within the region, highlighting potential nutritional inequities. This study characterizes how trade distributes seafood micronutrients sourced at the ocean basin scale and provides a foundation for future assessments of nutritional security and trade-offs in the region, supporting ongoing discussions on sustainable and equitable use of marine resources.

  PublisherDOI

• The contribution of aquatic foods to human nutrient intake and adequacy in a small Island developing state

  Scientific Reports · 2025-07-19 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Many Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are experiencing a nutrition transition, wherein high prevalence of malnutrition co-occurs with growing rates of diet-related non-communicable diseases. Sustainably managed and accessible aquatic foods can serve as a rich and bioavailable source of nutrients, helping communities achieve healthy diets and meet key sustainable development goals (e.g., SDG 1 No Poverty, SDG 2 Zero Hunger, and SDG 14 Life Below Water). However, to properly harness aquatic food systems in nutrition interventions, we must first understand aquatic food’s role in nutrient intake and adequacy. Here, using a nationally representative survey from Kiribati, we quantify the contribution of aquatic foods to nutrient intake and adequacy, and examine the spatial variability in nutrient intake adequacies. We find aquatic foods are the main contributors of most nutrients we examined, providing > 75% of vitamin B12, retinol, and heme iron, > 50% of niacin and total vitamin A, and > 25% of protein, vitamin E, potassium, and total iron consumed. Consumption of aquatic foods contributes to meeting key nutrient adequacies (e.g., niacin) and provides complete adequacy for vitamin B12 and protein. However, despite high aquatic food consumption, we find high levels of nutrient inadequacies (11 of the 17 nutrients with dietary reference intakes). Overall, our study quantifies the nutritional importance of aquatic foods in an emblematic SIDS, emphasizing their vulnerability to declining aquatic resources. We also highlight the need for cross-scale context-specific targeted nutrition interventions, even when aquatic food consumption is high, to enable SIDS to meet key SDGs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• DIAMOND2GO: rapid Gene Ontology assignment and enrichment detection for functional genomics

  Frontiers in Bioinformatics · 2025-08-15

  articleOpen access1st author

  DIAMOND2GO (D2GO) is a high-speed toolset for assigning Gene Ontology (GO) terms to genes or proteins based on sequence similarity. Leveraging the ultra-fast alignment capabilities of DIAMOND, which is 100 to 20,000 times faster than BLAST, D2GO enables rapid functional annotation of large-scale datasets. D2GO maps GO terms from pre-annotated sequences in the NCBI non-redundant database to query sequences. During benchmarking, D2GO assigned over 2 million GO terms to 98% of 130,184 predicted human protein isoforms in under 13 min on a standard laptop. In addition to annotation, D2GO includes an enrichment analysis tool that allows users to identify significantly overrepresented GO terms between subsets of sequences. We compared D2GO against two widely used tools, Blast2GO and eggNOG-mapper, and observed substantial differences in the number and type of annotations produced. These discrepancies reflect varying sensitivities and specificities across tools and suggest that using multiple methods in tandem may improve overall annotation coverage. D2GO is open-source and freely available under the MIT license at https://github.com/rhysf/DIAMOND2GO.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Quantifying the Nutritional and Socio‐Ecological Dimensions of Indian Ocean Fisheries

  Fish and Fisheries · 2025-07-10 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Seafood from marine fisheries, such as finfishes and invertebrates, is an important source of nutrients for billions of people globally. Seafood species vary in their micronutrient concentration, their economic value, and their vulnerability to exploitation and climate change. However, fisheries management has rarely considered the nutritional quality of fisheries catches and their relation to economic, conservation and climate vulnerability dimensions. Here, we quantified and analysed the micronutrient supply and average micronutrient concentration of taxa exploited by fisheries in the Indian Ocean. We also assessed associations among taxon‐specific micronutrient concentrations, ex‐vessel prices, fishing vulnerability and climate vulnerability. We found that small pelagic finfishes, despite contributing little to the overall catch weight, were particularly rich in micronutrients, were resilient and low priced, highlighting their utility in food and nutritional security. In contrast, taxa such as tunas and cephalopods were less nutrient‐dense, more vulnerable and had higher ex‐vessel prices. Results also showed differences in catch micronutrient concentrations between countries within the Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) and Distant Water Fishing (DWF) countries. IOR country catches were dominated by taxa richer in calcium, omega‐3 fatty acids and iron but with higher climate vulnerability. DWF catches, which accounted for only 2% of the Indian Ocean's total micronutrient supplies, were relatively richer in selenium, more vulnerable to fishing and had higher ex‐vessel prices. Our results highlight the trade‐offs and synergies among nutritional, economic, conservation and climate resilience dimensions of Indian Ocean fisheries, providing key insights for nutrition‐sensitive fisheries management strategies aimed at balancing multiple priorities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response for "Characterizing Newcastle disease virus transmission dynamics and the impact of vaccination in village settings"

  2025-10-10

  peer-reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Evaluating Agreement Between Global Satellite Data Products for Forest Monitoring in Madagascar

  Remote Sensing · 2025-04-22

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Producing high-quality local land cover data can be cost-prohibitive, leaving gaps in reliable estimates of forest cover and loss for environmental policy and planning. Remote sensing data (RSD) offer accessible, globally consistent layers for forest mapping. However, being able to produce reliable RSD-based land cover products with high local fidelity requires ground truth data, which are scarce and cost-intensive to obtain in settings like Madagascar. Global land cover datasets that rely on models trained mostly in well-studied regions claim to alleviate the problem of label scarcity. However, studies have shown that these products often fail to fulfill this promise. Given downstream studies focused on Madagascar still rely on these global land cover products, in this study we compared seven global RSD products measuring forest extent and change in Madagascar to explore levels of similarity across different forest ecoregions over multiple years. We also conducted temporal correlation analysis by checking the correlation between forest area from the different products. We found that agreement levels among the different data products varied by forest type and region, with higher disagreement levels in drier forest ecosystems (dry and spiny forests) than in more humid ones (moist forests and mangroves). For instance, if high agreement is defined as a pixel being classified as a forest by all or all but one product in a year, the average percentage of high-agreement pixels between 2016 and 2020 is just about 8% in the spiny forest and 16% in the dry forest region. These findings underscore the limitations of global RSD products and the importance of localized data for accurate forest monitoring, building justification for efforts to develop a local forest cover product for Madagascar. Our temporal similarity analysis indicates that, although pixel-level maps may show low agreement, temporal aggregates tend to be highly correlated in most cases. We synthesized these results with existing applications of global RSDs in Madagascar to propose practical recommendations for end-users of these products in Madagascar.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CNH-L: Interactive Dynamics of Reef Fisheries and Human Health

  NSF · $1.4M · 2018–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Cortni Borgerson

  Montclair State University

  45 shared

• Samuel S. Myers

  Johns Hopkins University

  44 shared

• Hervet J. Randriamady

  Harvard University

  42 shared

• Daniel Viana

  Harvard University

  39 shared

• Jacob G. Eurich

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  38 shared

• Jessica Zamborain‐Mason

  Harvard University

  36 shared

• Jessica A. Gephart

  University of Washington

  33 shared

• Benjamin L. Rice

  Institute Malgache De Recherches Appliquées

  30 shared

Labs

• Harvard University Center for the EnvironmentPI

Education

• Ph.D., Environmental Science, Policy and Management

  University of California, Berkeley

Awards & honors

• Ziff Environmental Fellow: 2011-2013