Using collaborative big data to understand shared socioecological drivers of human, wildlife, and environmental health and wellbeing in urban spaces
Christopher Schell, Professor
Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2023 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2024.
By 2025, the majority of the human population will live in urban areas. This prospect, along with global trends in biodiversity loss and environmental degradation, creates an urgency for understanding the linkages and feedbacks between ecological connectivity, wildlife health, and human health in urban environments. Through a number of case studies, we now understand that: 1) the scale and degree of urbanization may have non-linear impacts on wildlife connectivity and health; and more strikingly, 2) historical and current practices that exacerbate socioeconomic inequality - such as redlining, segregation, and gentrification - also drive environmental heterogeneity and may have cascading effects on human health and environmental processes in urban areas. We also know that urban biodiversity, wildlife, and ecological health have direct and indirect impacts on human mental health, physical wellbeing, and economics. However, the broad linkages among socioeconomic factors, wildlife connectivity and disease, and human health outcomes remain siloed and sorely understudied. To address this, we are using collaborative big data to answer the following broad questions:
1) What are the feedbacks between urban and suburban ecological connectivity, wildlife health, and human health over time and scale?
2) How can current and historical political and socioeconomic contexts predict environmental outcomes and cascading effects in urban areas?
3) How can we use these data to inform equitable and ecologically sound development, design, and redesign of cities in the 21st century?
Role: The primary tasks for this project will be to find, curate, clean, and organize existing ecological, infrastructure, and sociocultural data to contribute to our developing Bay Area (and beyond) database. Other tasks may include geospatial visualizations, field work, app and/or website development, and connecting with community members and partners.
Qualifications: Applicants should be interested in one or more of the following topics: One Health, wildlife ecology and movement, conservation science, public health, environmental health, environmental justice, urban ecology. Applicants should have an excitement to learn about multidisciplinary frameworks and methods. Required skills: Applicants should have some experience with the basics of ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap or another GIS software, competence in Microsoft Excel, an ability to work independently, an eye for detail, and patience with repetitive tasks. Desirable additional skills: experience with remote sensing, experience with R or other coding software, app or web-building experience.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Dr. Christine Wilkinson, Post-Doc
Hours: to be negotiated
Related website: https://schmidtsciencefellows.org/fellow/christine-wilkinson/
Environmental Issues