ESUR-IGERT Students
2011 Cohort |
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Sarah Kidd E-mail: sarah.kidd@pdx.edu Research: Wetland & riparian ecology, invasive plant ecology, restoration science and management Advisor: Dr. Alan Yeakely Degree: Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Management
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Paul Manson Paul (IGERT FELLOW) is a policy researcher who has been developing participatory decision support tools and methods that combine and synthesize expert opinion and community preferences. Recent efforts include spatially assisted public participation tools for ecosystem services planning in Nevada. This effort supports a local government policy for “no-net loss” of ecosystem services. Other research includes Bayesian inferential modeling for marine ecosystem service functions through a National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) funded project in partnership with Oregon State University. This project is developing a methodology to manage uncertainty in science, and divergent stakeholder opinions. He recently co-authored a Transportation Research Board report on the development of ecosystem service based crediting methods to better inform transportation decisions and measure progress. Paul has a B.A. in Anthropology from Reed College, and an MPA from PSU. For his undergraduate work, Paul conducted ethnological fieldwork in Arctic Alaska with two Iñupiat communities. This research was an examination of the landscape based semiotics in developing cultural narratives and social identities, and their role in present day governance. His graduate work included a broad set of studies across geography and economics along with public administration to include marine policy issues and ecosystem services into his M.PA. As an ESUR IGERT trainee, Paul seeks to explore the methods and tools communities can engage to better manage shared conflicted resources and to discover dependencies to resources not currently part of decisions. Of particular interest are the ways policy makers and individuals mediate their relationships with the environment through policies or social action. Problems include managing collective action problems around common or pool resources, and transfer of impacts or benefits across landscapes and communities. Paul hopes to participate in co-production of analyses and research with the communities involved. |
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Marissa Matsler Marissa (IGERT FELLOW) is a marine biologist and budding urban ecologist interested in how urban communities interact with water, and the ecological, political and social drivers and consequences of these interactions. This research passion was forged by the dichotomy of her experiences in both wet, coastal worlds and brilliant deserts. Her pursuit of a multidisciplinary career fusing biology and architecture began with a focus on symbiosis as an undergraduate, where layers of symbiotic relationships became apparent, not only in the sea anemones she was working on in the lab, but also in the structure of the city she interacted with daily. After completing her bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology at Oregon State University (OSU), Marissa studied green architecture in Arizona, receiving a certificate in Sustainable Design. Marissa became interested in management implications of ecological research throughout her time as a research assistant with OSU’S Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) and in desert rivers collecting aquatic bio‐indicators for the Lytle lab. Slowly, her interests in biology and architecture were scaling up to the fields of ecology and urban planning. As an environmental educator on Long Island Sound and student contractor, designing and implementing a recreational use survey on the Oregon coast, Marissa finally integrated the human element. She graduated from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies last spring with her Masters of Environmental Management. In the fall of 2011, Marissa will begin the Urban Studies Ph.D. program at PSU. As a part of the ESUR IGERT Program, she will examine modern infrastructure’s efficacy as an aquatic ecosystem service provider. Specifically, she plans to delve into the interaction of social, economic and ecological factors influencing the development and success of decentralized water infrastructure. Portland offers a wonderful opportunity to analyze the policy structure, as well as the ecological and social effects, of extensive decentralized storm water infrastructure created by the Grey to Green Initiative. Eco‐city development around the globe will offer an important juxtaposition of decentralized water infrastructure in rapidly urbanizing and post‐industrial urban areas. This opportunity propels Marissa towards her goal of becoming an interdisciplinarian working towards triple‐bottom‐line management of aquatic resources worldwide. |
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Basma Mohammad Basma (IGERT FELLOW) is a marine ecologist whose interests in climate change, applied ecology, biological diversity and resource conservation stem from her interdisciplinary undergraduate studies at Tufts University and the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program. While a research technician for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center on the Pacific Coast, she was a project leader for descriptive population and community ecology surveys for marine invasive species across a range of human-influenced habitats in northern California. SERC’s collaborative research with universities—University of California-Davis, San Francisco State University and PSU—introduced Basma to research on nutrient pollution and climate change impacts to organism-level processes. Her interests broadened towards research into the role of contaminants transported by storm water—such as heavy metals, agricultural and pesticide residues, or endocrine disrupters (EDCs) from wastewater treatment facilities—in shaping the diversity and resiliency of marine/estuarine and aquatic communities. Basma’s field ecology experience, combined with volunteer work in oyster habitat restoration, renewed her interests in environmental policy and management for urbanizing coastal areas. In 2009, she obtained her Master of Environmental Management degree from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Basma's graduate work will investigate environmentally-induced stresses for biotic populations—such as fish, crabs or mollusks. She plans to conduct research which investigates these broad questions: How might EDCs or other ‘contaminants of emerging concern’ (CECs) differentially affect biota providing ecosystem services in estuaries and near-shore systems? Could warmer water temperatures or ocean acidification (climate change) synergistically interact with pollutant impacts to biota? Ultimately, Basma is compelled by these questions towards such ‘wicked’ problems because research at the organism and population levels can inform environmental policy development and resource management as well as conservation actions at local and regional scales. |
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Jodi Schoenen Jodi (IGERT FELLOW) is a scientist and landscape architect with a wide range of experience in ecological restoration, site assessment, ecological risk assessment, and natural resource damage valuation. She holds a B.S. in Biology (Systematics and Ecology) from the University of Kansas – Lawrence. Jodi completed graduate work in International Agriculture and Rural Development at Cornell University, and holds a Masters of Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington – Seattle. Her interests in the sciences have repeatedly involved an interdisciplinary approach – from building a charter high school on an urban farm in New Haven, Connecticut, to developing experiential education methodology in an agricultural school in Guatemala as part of Peace Corps service. During the past 10 years, her work has integrated concepts of landscape ecology in severely contaminated aquatic sites into models of restoration that attempt to merge key ecological service elements biologically, economically, and from a policy perspective. Jodi’s recent project experience includes community analysis in riparian and coastal environments, the development of priority sites for aquatic restoration activities, as well as experience conducting ecological risk assessments for ports, agencies, and industrial clients. Jodi has developed shoreline habitat restoration designs for selected sites along the Lower Duwamish River, the Willamette River, and the Columbia River. Jodi has deepened her interest in how ecological services might be quantified and then translated into changes in environmental management. Specifically, she is involved in the development of wider-ranging models for quantifying ecosystem services in urban aquatic systems, and is interested in collaborating with local and regional partners who are fostering conversations at the intersection of ecosystem services valuation, economics, and environmental management/policy. |
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Roy Watters Roy (IGERT FELLOW) is a cultural anthropologist working on cultural and natural resource management issues. He has worked extensively as a consultant for a cultural resource management firm that works with private companies, federal and state agencies, and Indian Tribes to identify and protect cultural resources under federal and state historic preservation laws. Working closely with Tribes, he has helped develop a Traditional Cultural Property (TCP) Management Plan for a hydroelectric project, led an interdisciplinary team to identify and map cultural plant locations on Tribal lands, and researched historic and Treaty Fishing Access Sites along the Columbia River. He has also contributed to National Park Service research projects in history and ethnography through the PSU Department of Anthropology and the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit. Roy has designed and conducted ethnographic research in Mexico and the United States in urban, suburban and rural settings. His field-based research has examined religious experience, technological adoption (Intel), ethnobotany, and Native American cultural and environmental history. Roy has a B.A. from The Evergreen State College and a M.A. in Anthropology from PSU. Roy plans to work with government agencies and Tribes to identify new avenues for linking the scientific management of ecosystems with Tribal efforts to preserve and restore these same ecosystems. Increasingly, Tribes are seeking opportunities for linking cultural continuity with undertakings to preserve the natural environment and the many species therein that have been sustainably exploited for millennia. Place-based research that integrates scientific natural resource management and Native American traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and that is informed by a larger research framework such as ecosystem services management, may provide a model for co-management that can be applied in other settings. Roy’s research will be grounded in solving critical, real-world problems by engaging natural resource managers and Tribal organizations to develop collaborative management approaches addressing both natural and cultural resources. |
2012 Cohort |
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Amy K Coplen Amy (IGERT FELLOW) is a social ecologist working at the intersection of food studies, policy, sustainability, and environmental education to understand the relationship between communities and urban environments. Amy holds a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. Her undergraduate work focused on the acequia irrigation communities of Northern New Mexico, where ancient agricultural traditions compete with development for scarce water resources. Amy recognized the absence of the environmental, social, and cultural values in resource allocation while contributing to systems dynamics models at Sandia National Laboratories. She believes that an ecosystem services approach to measuring community, social, and environmental health, can account for complex dependencies on natural resources that have traditionally been left out of the equation. Amy’s master’s work at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies included an ethnography of community gardens utilized by both conservation and public health organizations in New Haven. This work allowed Amy to experiment with creative methods of data collection, including audio recording and photography, and sharing research with broad audiences, through radio, community exhibits, and web-based multimedia. Her project captured the role of community gardens in engaging urban populations, immigrants, people of color, children and youth, and the elderly in both conservation and disease prevention efforts. Amy believes that education is critical to creating sustainable community food systems. After two years of managing food and farm-based curriculum, she has been excited to see the effects of this programming on hundreds of New Haven children and nearly a hundred trained volunteers. Through a food systems lens, Amy plans to use interdisciplinary, whole systems, and community-based research to promote equitable management of urban spaces. She will explore how urban farms and community gardens contribute to food provisioning, social cohesion, cultural expression, environmental and public health, quality of life, and the strengthening of local food systems. |
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Erin Goodling Erin (IGERT FELLOW) is a first-year student in the Urban Studies PhD program at PSU, with field area concentrations in urban ecology and community development. In addition to joining the 2012 ESUR IGERT cohort, she is a PSU Laurels Scholar and an Ernie Bonner Equity Planning scholarship recipient. Erin is interested in the intersection of social and biophysical processes related to urbanization. In particular, her research interests converge around environmental justice, urban political ecology, food systems and urban agriculture, civic ecology/public participation, urban education, and social innovation. As an ESUR IGERT Fellow, she looks forward to bridging method and theory from the social and environmental sciences to study socio-ecological changes in urban areas that are economically, politically, and socially-mediated. Erin wants to better understand the various ways in which an ecosystem services framework may impact different groups, and plans to pursue research that is both critical and prescriptive. She is currently collaborating on a research project that investigates the historical forces that have shaped food insecurity in East Portland, which will set the stage for future research examining community and policy responses to conditions of local food insecurity. Erin holds an English Language Learner graduate certificate from Stanford University (2009); an M.A in teaching from Lewis & Clark College (2005); and a B.A. in Spanish with a minor in political science from the University of Portland (2003). She brings ten years of experience working with homeless teenagers while straddling education and social services sectors, working for both Outside In in Portland, Oregon and the San Francisco Unified School District at Larkin Street Youth Services. Erin also taught middle school language arts in Ewa Beach, Hawai’i, high school language arts at Madison High School in Portland, and high school outdoor education at Catlin Gabel School in Portland. She recently co-wrote an interdisciplinary curriculum guide, Sustainable Communities, for middle and high school teachers with San Francisco education organization World Savvy. Erin is currently working on a second curriculum guide that will help high school teachers and undergraduate instructors include urban social and environmental topics in their courses. Both guides draw on critical pedagogy theory, experiential/popular education techniques, the arts, technology, and project-based curriculum to help teachers engage students in hands-on learning about socio-ecological challenges. Erin looks forward to aligning her research methods as an ESUR IGERT Fellow with her teaching philosophy by using participatory alternatives to top-down research approaches. |
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Zbigniew Grabowski Zbigniew (IGERT FELLOW) is a free thinking ecologist interested in a wide range of environmental problems stemming from lack of creative vision regarding human-environmental relationships. He will be working on better articulating this vision this summer as a Fellow at the Oakland Based Breakthrough Institute. For the past two years he has lived in London, England, working as an independent consultant with the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community, and as a Co-Investigator on a Valuing Nature Network (Funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council) Project ‘Stocks and Flows.' His main work has focused on developing conceptual frameworks for investigating the scale dependency of ecosystem attributes in supplying ecosystem services in urban and agro-ecosystems. Previously at the University of Connecticut he worked on a wide range of research questions; spanning plant genetics, food web characterization with isotope techniques (as a summer stint at Yale), and the impacts of beavers on hydro-geomorphology in New England. During his Masters work he spent two months in Panama on a socio-ecological feasibility study for a UN sponsored Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program. His experiences in Central America went on to inform his work on the relationship between markets for single ecosystem services (in particular carbon) and the multiple outputs and attributes of socio-ecological agro-forest systems. His broad interests span the use of models and environmental inventories in decision-making processes, energy and material flows in ecosystems, traditional and contemporary ecological knowledge, organic farming, and the relationship between the appreciation of nature and human behavior. As an IGERT Fellow, Zbigniew will be working with Drs. Elise Granek and Heejun Chang to study how different patterns of land use and infrastructural development impact ecological processes and ecosystem services across terrestrial-marine gradients. Using a hydrological lens Zbigniew hopes to refine existing models for ecosystem service valuation and better understand the relationship between cultural drivers of land use and the resultant supply and demand of ecosystem services. |
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Jamaal Green Jamaal (IGERT FELLOW) is a planner by training with a masters degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, specializing in economic development. Jamaal, currently a PSU student in Urban Studies and Planning, is studying the spatial and physical aspects of climate change adaptation and mitigation. In addition, he has become increasingly interested in examining the links between sustainability, social equity, racism, and the dichotomous of man's relationship to nature and how these play into what is considered "sustainable" and how that is manifested in a city like Portland. There are situations in all cities, Portland included, that expose the tense relationship between what is commonly understood as "sustainable" (the construction of bike lanes, for example) that run headlong into issues of institutional and cultural racism. In response, many sustainably-minded individuals and organizations risk in perpetuating the very racist institutions and approaches that they should be fighting against because the view of what is "sustainable" is often defined in a sexist, heternormative, and racist fashion. One of my goals is to continually expose these tendencies and to attempt to re-orient sustainability around concepts of social justice and economic opportunity, as well as ecological preservation. Jamaal’s current research projects include a study examining food insecurity in East Portland, a look at municipal climate action and sustainability plans in order to see if they incorporate equity aspects. Jamaal is also currently performing a preliminary literature review to examine connections between land valuation, ecosystem services, and conservation. While an ESUR IGERT student, he hopes to pursue this land valuation question as part of his dissertation work and to continue to write and research on the intersections of race, privilege, class, and sustainability. |
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Samantha Hamlin Samantha (IGERT FELLOW) is a marine biologist and budding environmental economist and policy researcher. Samantha earned her bachelor’s degree from The Evergreen State College in biology, and went on to Western Washington University to earn her M.S. in Marine and Estuarine Science, studying the possible effects of predation on the bleaching response in corals. In order to have a better foundation for conservation work, she then went on to earn her M.B.A., also from Western Washington University. It was during her M.B.A. internship that she discovered an interest in environmental economics and the application of ecosystem services to environmental management. During her internship, Samantha worked with the Natural Resources Marketplace Working Group in Whatcom County, Washington, performing a financial and economic analysis of ecosystem services in the Fishtrap Watershed, a watershed in heavy agricultural production straddling the Washington/British Columbia border. She collaborated with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Department of Ecology, local dairy farmers, and biologists and economists from Western Washington University. Specifically, this analysis focused on the costs and benefits to both farmers and the community of agricultural production, salmonid and shellfish production, water flow, flood mitigation, and pollination. The initial financial analysis was expanded to include a spatial and economic analysis to help drive the selection of a pilot site for trading marketplace credits. Her continuing interest in environmental policy and management has led Samantha to work with the Chair of the Scientific and Technical Review Panel of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, an international, intergovernmental treaty providing a framework for the conservation and wise use of wetlands. Her work for Ramsar has been wide-ranging: benchmarking convention bylaws, researching extractive industry threats in Africa, and analyzing reporting of mining hotspots in Africa. Samantha is looking forward to integrating her previous research and internship experience with her future ESUR IGERT graduate work with Dr. Heejun Chang. She is interested in the use of environmental economics, spatial analysis, and the quantification of ecosystem services to drive development and environmental management decisions, especially related to water policy and watershed management. |
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Andy Harwood Andy (IGERT ASSOCIATE) is a marine ecologist working with Dr. Elise Granek at Portland State University towards his Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Management. His current research focuses on how non-native species affect coastal ecosystem services and processes. Specifically, he is studying the spread of non-native mangrove trees along the coastlines of Hawai’i and other Pacific Islands. His interdisciplinary approach combines traditional ecological research with molecular, geochemical, and social science techniques to examine larger suites of ecosystem services and the trade-offs following mangrove colonization and removal efforts. Participation in the ESUR IGERT Program will help strengthen his communication and collaboration skills while working with this multidisciplinary cohort at PSU. The ESUR Program will also provide additional training in how to improve communication between scientists and managers; a critical component in the development of adaptive management plans to address invasive species challenges. Before coming to PSU, Andy worked in the Salmonid Genetics Lab at Washington State University where he received a Masters degree studying conservation genetics and hybridization between native and introduced fish species in the Pacific Northwest. He has nearly a decade of experience working on various salmon and habitat restoration efforts in the Columbia River Basin for state and federal agencies including the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and tribal organizations such as the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. As an American Academy of Underwater Sciences scientific SCUBA diver, he worked for the Marine Ecology Lab at WSU assisting them in monitoring the Marine Protected Areas in Hawai’i. As a science educator, Andy participated in the National Science Foundation GK-12 program where he co-taught life science in both 7th and 9th grade classrooms. Andy’s extreme enthusiasm for science and native wildlife has made him a favorite repeat guest lecturer at over a dozen middle and high schools in the greater Portland metro area. |
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Douglas Shoemaker Douglas (IGERT FELLOW) is a landscape ecologist who has been using geospatial analyses, modeling and field data collection techniques to explore human-environmental interaction in both urban and wildland contexts. In his role as Project Coordinator for the Charlotte urban long term research area exploratory program (ULTRA-Ex), Doug was part of a team of ecologists, social scientists and urban planners investigating how the intrinsic valuations of cultural and ecological factors by non-industrial private forest owners led to the mosaic of woodlands which persist even in the most densely developed area in the Charlotte metropolitan region. With an MS in Forestry from Florida, Doug has studied sudden oak death (SOD) mortality in the Big Sur (CA) and used remote sensing techniques and a process-based simulation model to make spatially explicit estimates of carbon storage in Florida industrial pine plantations. Doug’s most recent work is at UNC Charlotte, where he co-developed a dynamic land use/land change model which forecasts and quantifies the fragmentation effects of rapid urban growth on extant forest and farmlands. In all cases, Doug embraces the goals of applied research, and strives to produce analyses that are purpose driven, contextually sensitive, scientifically rigorous, and legally and economically credible. Working with Drs. Vivek Shandas and Alan Yeakley, Doug’s research motivation is: “Can cities provision, regulate and nurture ecosystem services sustainably, and exhibit system resilience, much like native ecosystems?” Cities are novel ecosystems that are also an expanding reservoir of human culture and population, and the answers likely to arise from this focal question directly inform our efforts to live sustainably. Despite our ability to conceptualize the problem in terms of human-environment interaction, challenges in bridging socio-economic and natural science approaches persist, confounding the path to resolution. Doug’s enthusiasm to tackle the challenge of conducting transdisciplinary research has inspired his enrollment in PSU’s ESUR IGERT program, where he hopes to contribute to a future where cities foster human wellbeing much like benign ecosystems. |
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Brianna Tarnower Brianna (IGERT ASSOCIATE) is an environmental health scientist interested in assessing the composition, sources, and effects of urban surface and groundwater contamination on the biotic health of downstream ecosystems in coastal watersheds. Brianna’s passion for researching the interrelationship between watershed health and human health developed while working as a research assistant for the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) in 2009. SCCWRP, a public-private research institute, worked in collaboration with 19 researchers from universities and public agencies across the United States to conduct a multi-year epidemiological and microbiological study of bacterial contamination on southern California beaches and coastal waters. Stimulated by this interdisciplinary topic and method, Brianna’s master’s research at the University of California-Los Angeles expanded into the exploration of systems-level approaches to establishing causal linkages between landscape change, ecosystem services, and emerging infectious disease transmission. Her interest in interdisciplinary study began at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where she focused her undergraduate double major (Biology and Environmental Studies) on the field science and political ecology of sustainable agriculture and ethnobotany. For her Ph.D. research, and as an ESUR IGERT Associate, Brianna would like to develop models that link contaminant releases from particular urban habitat types with alterations in downstream ecosystem function and health, with the goal of informing integrated regional watershed management decisions. In particular, her research will measure the biotic health of estuarine, intertidal, and nearshore communities using ecological assessment methods, analyze physical and chemical characteristics of surface waters and sediments, and examine surface water flows from urban habitats. She is also interested in determining the effects of low-level chronic contaminant exposures to aquatic ecosystems. Through collaboration with economic, social, and political scholars, as well as local and regional partners and other scientists, Brianna hopes to integrate these scientific findings into effective regional policy and management recommendations to generate safer water resources for both humans and natural communities of organisms. |
2013 Cohort |
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Diana Denham Diana (IGERT FELLOW) is a planner by training, with Masters’ degrees in Urban and Regional Planning and Latin American Studies from the University of California-Los Angeles. She has lived in Oaxaca, Mexico during the last six years, most recently conducting research on regional food systems in collaboration with a team from the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Integral Regional Development (CIIDIR, by its Spanish acronym). Working alongside a botanist specializing in agro-biodiversity and an engineer trained in natural resource management, Diana studies the basis of local food security and vulnerabilities related to macro-economic policies, climate and changing government programs in rural communities. Along similar lines, she collaborates closely with a group of youth researchers from the Chinantla, one of the most biologically diverse regions in Mexico, to study their own food system and develop a series of proposals to protect agro-biodiversity and improve nutrition. |
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Ashlie Denton Ashlie (ISS FELLOW) is a first-year student in PSU’s Public Affairs and Policy Ph.D. Program. Through her education, she has gained a desire to develop research and implementation opportunities that work to address interwoven issues, such as environmental sustainability, poverty, justice, health, and assets, as bound instead of easily separated. She sees these interconnected issues as needing to be thoroughly explored when considering person- and place-based strategies for creating more connected, equitable communities. Ashlie’s research will be focused on multidisciplinary collaboration, reflective of work in governmental and nonprofit sectors, looking at placement, environmental sustainability, and civic engagement as they relate to effectiveness and identity creation within nonprofit and government institutions. |
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Nicholas Hamilton Nicholas (IGERT FELLOW) is a research engineer with focus in fluid mechanics and turbulence. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (PSU) and a M.S. in Turbulence (\'{E}cole Centrale de Lille and ENSMA, France). Nicholas’ research centers around wind energy and wake interaction within canopies including vegetation, urban canopies, and wind turbine arrays. To date his projects have been focused on wind tunnel experiments with emphasis on scaleability and laser-based measurement techniques such as particle image velocimetry. Publications include several forms of decomposition of turbulent stresses in canopies and statistical analysis of complex flows. This work is leading to low-order representations of wakes for numerical simulations and wind farm design software. As shown in his research, the combined effects of strategic turbine deployment and the entrainment of high-speed wind throughout wake regions play a key role in optimization of future array designs. |
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Alicia Imbody Alicia (ISS FELLOW) is an international development project manager and evaluator focusing on sustainable international development in post-conflict settings. Alicia completed undergraduate and graduate studies in international relations and economic development at the American and George Washington Universities in Washington, DC. Prior to moving to Portland, she spent 7 years based in the nation’s capital with frequent travel to the Middle East and Central Asia. Her professional background includes a broad range of work in the international development field, with a focus on post-conflict governance and community-based sustainability solutions. Alicia has presented on evaluation methodology and theory at multiple evaluation conferences such as the State Department on Program Evaluation Conference, to audiences ranging across government employees, academia, and industry practitioners. Her academic and professional experiences in complex transitioning settings have exposed her to unique challenges for measuring impact and instituting sustainable program designs. Her most recent work on a stabilization project in southern Afghanistan prompted her to come to Portland to begin a PhD focusing on measurable sustainable solutions for urbanizing post-conflict environments. |
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Melanie Malone Melanie (IGERT FELLOW) is a soil scientist who enjoys using geospatial analyses and field data collection techniques to analyze natural resource systems and anthropogenic impacts. As an undergraduate, Melanie studied Geology and English, and graduated with a double major in both disciplines from Williams College. Melanie obtained her M.S. degree in Soil Science at Oregon State University. Her thesis focused on providing an accurate and useful Land Type Association Map (LTA) of the Fremont-Winema National Forests of South-Central Oregon for the U.S Forest Service. The LTA map was produced by combining geospatial data with the basic predictors of soil formation to predict soil types in her study area. This approach to mapping soils resulted in a more productive and accurate way to map soil types compared to using traditional mapping methods. After graduating from Oregon State University, Melanie worked as a geologist at a private consulting firm. During her time there, she learned much about the history of soil and groundwater contamination in numerous sites around the Portland Metro area and surrounding Northwest states. Melanie became particularly interested in studying the spatial relationships and effects of contamination in water systems in places experiencing increasing urbanization. |
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Charles Maxwell Charles Maxwell (IGERT Fellow) is a forester interested in pairing ecosystem modeling with economic evaluation to assess ecosystem services on the landscape level. Charles is a graduate of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, with Masters degrees in Forestry (MF) and Environmental Management (MEM). Charles also holds a Bachelors degree in Economics from Wake Forest University. While at Duke, Charles developed an interest in the impact of the environment on population health. This interest was further cultivated through a project at the landscape level linking spatial, economic, and health data to evaluate the impact of poor air quality on the health of a population and the subsequent economic impact. It was through this analysis that Charles became interested in further exploring novel approaches of utilizing ecology and economics to investigate ways to realign incentives to address such problems. |
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Mary Ann Rozance Mary Ann (IGERT FELLOW) is an environmental social science researcher exploring the seemingly impenetrable land use questions characteristic of social-ecological systems. Her research interests center on the desire to move toward solutions in land use planning and policy. Over the past several years, her areas of focus have included the role of private landowners in shaping our landscape, understanding how social sciences can be applied to ecosystem recovery efforts, examining factors that affect how people interact with the environment and how they respond to policies. Both during and after completing her Bachelor’s degree in forestry from the University of British Columbia, Mary Ann worked in landowner incentive and education programs in Lake Tahoe and Southern California, providing various “carrots and sticks” to motivate environmental practices. This experience helped her recognize the heterogeneity of landowner values, perceptions and attitudes and how these differences reflect across the landscape. Between 2008 and 2010 she attended University of Washington to pursue a Master’s degree from the School of Environment and Forest Science studying forest landowners in Washington State and their likelihood of anticipating development on their property. Since then, she has continued to work on social science research within the Puget Sound region and has served as the Program Coordinator for the Washington State University Extension North Puget Sound Forest Stewardship Program. |
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Brianna Tarnower |
