Why did you decide to become an academic? Honestly, I’ve never been someone who was necessarily set on becoming an academic. I earned my PhD in marine ecology, but was always most interested in and motivated by research questions with implications for marine conservation, natural resource management, and marine policy. My early exposure to academia…
Category: Climate and Environment
Meet a Social Scientist: Xiao Feng from the Department of Geography
Why did you decide to become an academic?Being a scientist is cool. When I was young, I like nature and the diverse natural creatures, and I also love seeing maps, which leads to me to study biogeography and how biodiversity is distributed across the world. What do you find most fulfilling about your job?It is…
Research Spotlight: Planning for Climate Migration and Climate Gentrification in Florida
Sea level rise is one of the clear and present dangers associated with climate change in Florida. With the longest coastline in the lower 48 states, an economy fueled by beach tourism, and a population crowded into our coastal counties, Florida’s coastal cities and towns face an accelerating rate of sea level rise that will…
Research Spotlight: Environmental injustice in Clean Water Act enforcement: Racial and income disparities in inspection time
Race and income-based disparities often manifest themselves as delays in policy delivery. For example, discrepancies exist in the speed and depth of disaster recovery assistance efforts across different communities. In the area of health care, the race of the patient has been associated with longer wait times in emergency rooms. There is also mixed evidence…
Research Spotlight: Urban Remote Sensing (2nd edition)
Remote sensing is the technology of acquiring information about the environment through interpreting energy patterns recorded by sensors mounted on various aerospace platforms. While this technology has traditionally been the colony of geoscience and national security communities, its relatively recent applications to the urban environment (urban remote sensing) have been predominately driven by the innovations…
Research Quick Take
Here at the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy (COSSPP), our faculty have been quite busy! Here are some of the projects that our faculty have recently published. “The Conditional Nature of Political Risk: How Home Institutions Influence the Location of Foreign Direct Investment” by Dr. Quintin Beazer and Daniel J. Blake In his…
Policy Pub: “What’s Over That Hill? Improving disaster intelligence and decision-making”
On September 15, in the video below, David Merrick, director of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program and the Center for Disaster Risk Policy (CDRP) discussed the next generation of tools for emergency managers and how new methods and technologies are improving natural disaster preparedness, monitoring, and rescue and recovery efforts. Merrick also discussed…
Research Spotlight: The Hidden Electoral Incentive: How Voters Reward Candidates’ Climate Change Positions
Environmental problems in and of themselves are apolitical—a Democrat in New York City requires clean air and water and a stable climate just as a Republican in Mississippi does. In fact, much of the groundbreaking environmental legislation passed in the United States was signed into law by Republican presidents and featured strong bipartisan support. Even…
Swarming tornadoes
This post first appeared on the Florida State University’s Department of Geography News & Chair’s Blog. The violent winds of tornadoes are one of the most dangerous natural hazards on Earth. While relatively rare in any one location they often occur in swarms. I’ve been working with graduate student Zoe Schroder to answer the question of whether…
Living with the Lionfish Problem: Awareness and Joint Operations
This post first appeared on the Devoe L. Moore Center blog. As Florida looks inward to address ecological concerns, the lionfish invasion continues to plague coastal citizens and marine fauna. The problem has hampered both fishermen and ecological researchers in the Gulf Coast, effectively choking growth and stability on local reefs. With a growing population in the Gulf,…
Wicked Problems, Wicked Solutions 