Social Ecological Systems (SESs) are any management context—agriculture, forest and range management, recreation, species conservation—where the actions of people have direct effects on, and are also directly affected by, the function of the natural world. Exogenous threats, including climate change, biological invasions, and disease, threaten the stability and resiliency of SESs from local to global scales. Anticipatory and adaptive responses are needed to address these challenges and maintain desired social and natural conditions. However, exogenous threats to SESs are particularly vexing for resource managers because of 1) incomplete knowledge about how SESs will respond; 2) lack of agreement on the nature, extent, likelihood, and uncertainties associated with threat emergence; and 3) existing policies that limit the set of available adaptive and anticipatory responses. And yet, managers and policy makers still bear responsibility for avoiding dangerous ecological and social thresholds.
I am an Assistant Professor of Rangeland Ecology and Adaptive Management in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona. My work is focused on solving these emerging challenges in SESs. I am an environmental social scientist with broad training in theories of human behavior and decision making (Cognitive Hierarchy Theory, Theory of Planned Behavior, Protection Motivation Theory, etc.) and frameworks for analyzing governance institutions (IAD Framework, SES Framework). I also have interdisciplinary training in climate science and rangeland ecology and management.
I use this unique combination of skills to engage in transdisciplinary work with ecologists, climate scientists, and policy scientists to address pressing management and governance challenges including biological invasions, climate change induced forest die-off, migratory species conservation, and adaptive management of rangelands. I teach in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment in our Ecology, Management, and Restoration of Rangelands program. I currently teach two classes: Conservation of Natural Environments, and introduction to natural resources management for majors in our School, and Rangeland Plant Communities of the Western United States, our core plant ecology and plant identification course.