Resume

• 2006

  M.S.

  Applied Statistics

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

  Dissertation: The Impacts of Rural-to-Urban Labor Migration on the Rural Environment in Chongqing Municipality

  Southwest China: Mediating Roles of Rural Household Livelihoods and Community Development\n\n•\tSpecialization in Environmental and Natural Resource Sociology\n•\tGraduate Certificate in Business Administration

  College of Business

  2009\n•\tGraduate Certificate in East Asian Studies

  Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies

  Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences

  Member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and the International Honor Society of Agriculture Gamma Sigma Delta.

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• 2005

  Ph.D. Student

  Rural Sociology and Demography

  Penn State University

• 2000

  M.S.

  Development Sociology

  China Agricultural University

• Demography

  Policy

  Ecology

  Statistics

  Sustainability

  Natural Resource Management

  Higher Education

  Environmental Science

  Data Analysis

  Applied Research

  Analysis

  Grant Writing

  ArcGIS

  Climate Change

  GIS

  Sustainable Development

  Research

  Science

  Qualitative Research

  Environmental Awareness

  The association between rural-urban migration flows and urban air quality in China

  In light of the rapid urbanization of the world’s population over the past decades

  there is a growing concern about the environmental impacts of urban population growth. Rural–urban migration is a particularly important component of the urbanization process in developing countries and is often considered to be detrimental to urban environmental conditions. However

  few studies have explicitly examined the presumed negative impacts of in-migration on the natural environment of cities. The continuously increasing volume of rural–urban labor migration in China since the early 1980s has formed the largest population flow in world history. This study links the existing literature on population–environment and urbanization–environment interactions by empirically assessing the relationship between rural–urban migration and urban air conditions in China.

  The association between rural-urban migration flows and urban air quality in China

  Ojetunde Ojewola

  Meghan Hatcher

  Yassine Dguidegue

  Elizabeth Bent

  The sociology of natural resources and the environment constitutes a major field of inquiry in the research on human–environmental interactions. A constructive debate and dialogue on the relationships between environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources began at the 2000 International Symposium on Society and Resource Management in Bellingham

  Wash. Frederick Buttel argued that the two subdisciplines had different subject matters

  levels of analysis

  spatial focuses

  theoretical orientations

  policy relevance

  and interdisciplinary commitments. These distinctive tendencies have been widely accepted in environmental and natural resource social science but have not been systematically analyzed. The primary objective of this research is to conduct an empirical test of Buttel's differentiating criteria through a systematic review of sample American sociological journal articles published in 2000 and 2014.

  Fifteen Years after the Bellingham ISSRM: An Empirical Evaluation of Frederick Buttel’s Differentiating Criteria for Environmental and Resource Sociology

  Laura McCann

  Adopting drought tolerant plants (DTPs) to conserve water is a potential adaptation to the predicted effects of climate change in the Midwest. Survey responses from 624 Missouri households were analyzed using a univariate probit model. DTP adoption was positively correlated with both low and high household incomes

  living in rural subdivisions

  time spent gardening

  pro-environment attitudes

  and concerns about drought. Policy interventions in newly drought-prone areas might include subsidizing the up-front cost of DTPs

  requiring their use in new housing developments so DTPs are the default for buyers

  and targeted educational efforts to environmental and gardening groups and rural residents.

  Households’ Adoption of Drought Tolerant Plants: An Adaptation to Climate Change?

  Elizabeth Prentice

  Community surveys have been widely used to investigate local residents’ perceptions and behaviors related to natural resource issues. However

  most existing community survey research relies on cross-sectional data and is thus unable to capture the temporal dynamics of community processes. Longitudinal analysis has received increasing interest in recent natural resource social science literature. Trend and panel studies are two typical approaches in longitudinal community survey research. Due to limited sampling frames

  research design

  and respondent attrition

  longitudinal community surveys often involve both paired and independent observations across different survey waves. Using previous survey data on community responses to forest insect disturbance in Alaska as an example

  this research note shows that the corrected z-test is a more appropriate approach to analyze partially correlated longitudinal data than conventional statistical techniques such as the paired and independent t-tests.

  Analyzing partially correlated longitudinal data in community survey research

  Anne Cafer

  Agriculture-led economic development

  an impor¬tant policy driver in sub-Saharan Africa

  requires both agricultural intensification and environ¬mentally sustainable resource management. Sus¬tain¬¬able Intensification (SI) provides a mechanism for achieving both. However

  SI within an SSA context has yet to be widely examined in the scholarly literature; it has been confined instead to technical briefs and white papers. This meta-analysis

  conducted in 2015

  examines 58 articles that focus on SI in SSA published between 2001 and 2015 and listed in prominent research data¬bases (EBSCOhost

  Agricola

  and Google Scholar). This analysis uses the 2013 Montpellier Framework for Sustainable Intensification to examine

  critique

  and find avenues for improvement in research within this emerging body of literature.

  Sustainable intensification

  community and the Montpellier Panel: A meta-analysis of rhetoric in practice in Sub-Saharan Africa

  Yi Zhang

  Ali Kharrazi

  Cities are perhaps one of the most challenging and yet enabling arenas for sustainable development goals. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize the need to monitor each goal through objective targets and indicators based on common denominators in the ability of countries to collect and maintain relevant standardized data. While this approach is aimed at harmonizing the SDGs at the national level

  it presents unique challenges and opportunities for the development of innovative urban-level metrics through big data innovations. In this article

  we make the case for advancing more innovative targets and indicators relevant to the SDGs through the emergence of urban big data.

  Urban Big Data and Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges and Opportunities

  Rural

  high-amenity areas in the USA continue to attract significant numbers of migrants. A common approach to investigating the potential consequences of rural in-migration is to contrast the characteristics

  attitudes

  and/or actions of migrants and non-migrants (or “newcomers” and “oldtimers”). However

  no consensus exists on the distinctions (or the lack thereof) between these two groups in the existing literature

  in part because previous research used a variety of methods to classify residence status. Drawing on household survey data from nine communities in north-central Colorado

  this study illustrates how different categorizations may yield different conclusions.

  Newcomers and oldtimers: Do classification methods matter in the study of amenity migration impacts in rural America?

  Courtney Flint

  Local sociocultural processes including community perceptions and actions represent the most visible social impacts of various economic and environmental changes. Comparative community analysis has been used to examine diverse community perspectives on a variety of socioeconomic and environmental issues. However

  as the temporal dimension of community processes remains understudied

  relatively little is known regarding how such community variations change over time. This study draws on longitudinal survey data from six communities on the Kenai Peninsula

  Alaska

  to explore temporal shifts in community differences in perceptions and activeness in response to forest disturbance associated with an extensive spruce bark beetle outbreak.

  Changing community variations in perceptions and activeness in response to the spruce bark beetle outbreak in Alaska

  Angelica Rosas-Huerta

  Jorgelina Hardoy

  While urbanites are vulnerable to a suite of risks that climate change might aggravate (e.g.

  mortality from extreme temperatures and property damages from floods)

  urban populations and decision makers may also be positioned to most effectively respond to such risks. Research is needed

  however

  for exploring both the multilevel factors and processes that determine urban risk and the complex pathways from hazards to impacts

  and from perceptions and coping responses to adaptation. This paper analyzes whether and under what circumstances urban populations experience risk in selected Latin American neighborhoods of Bogotá

  Buenos Aires

  Mexico and Santiago; it assesses their adaptation capacity

  i.e.

  ability to perceive and respond to hazards.

  Scale

  urban risk and adaptation capacity in neighborhoods of Latin American cities

  Development is contentious in high-amenity rural areas experiencing migration-driven population growth. While some residents welcome the associated economic

  demographic

  and social changes

  others resist these changes. Using survey data

  we examine the predictors of views on amenity-led development in rural recreation counties across the United States

  including to what extent there is evidence of a “culture clash

  ” that is

  whether values and attitudes of new and long-term residents differ about local development issues as is often assumed. In addition

  we examine whether attitudes toward development impact an important community outcome—residents’ involvement in their community.

  Culture Clash? Predictors of Views on Amenity-Led Development and Community Involvement in Rural Recreation Counties

  Xinyu Gao

  Elizabeth Prentice

  Andrea Tappmeyer

  Despite the conceptual value of contextualism in community science

  including studies on community and natural resources

  the methodology for examining community context is not adequately developed. Such research deficiency necessitates further exploration of creative analytical techniques appropriate for studying community context and related contextual effects. The primary objective of this research brief is to demonstrate the use of a unique applied social science technique

  qualitative comparative analysis

  in contextual community research.

  Capturing Community Context through Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Case Studies

  A.E. Luloff

  Courtney Flint

  A rapidly growing literature on the human dimensions of forest disturbance by insects has emerged over the past decade. As a result

  the diverse social and economic impacts of forest disturbances and their implications have become increasingly understood. However

  little research has assessed the temporal dynamics of community experience

  perceptions

  and actions related to changing forest landscapes and risks. Using longitudinal survey data from 2004 to 2008

  this study examines the changing human dimensions of forest disturbance in the context of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula spruce bark beetle outbreak.

  Tracing Temporal Changes in the Human Dimensions of Forest Insect Disturbance on the Kenai Peninsula

  Alaska

  The relationships between migration and agriculture represent a key aspect of rural restructuring in China and many other developing countries. Previous research largely generated mixed and incomplete findings on the effects of rural out-migration on agricultural change. Meta-analysis is considered as an important research strategy for comparing and integrating results from individual studies. Using a qualitative comparative analysis approach

  we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of recent case studies of labor out-migration and agricultural change in rural China.

  Labor out-migration and agricultural change in rural China: A systematic review and meta-analysis

  Many parts of rural America have experienced various types of reverse migration flows from urban areas since the 1970s. Recent rural in-migration is increasingly driven by people seeking natural amenities

  and tends to concentrate in traditional natural resource-based communities or wildland–urban interface areas. These communities are often at risk from a variety of ecological disturbances (e.g.

  insects

  wildfires

  and droughts) that are expected to be exacerbated by environmental change across different scales. A common strategy in studying the potential social

  economic

  and environmental impacts of rural in-migration is to compare rural migrants to non-migrants on relevant perceptions

  attitudes

  and activities. However

  despite the highly dynamic nature of rural population change

  few studies have assessed temporal shifts in migrant-nonmigrant differences. Alaska's Kenai Peninsula has experienced both a large spruce bark beetle outbreak and substantial in-migration in recent decades. Drawing on longitudinal survey data (2004 and 2008) from six rural communities there

  this study explores the evolution of differences between newer and longer-term rural residents in community experience

  perceptions

  and activeness in response to the beetle outbreak.

  Comparing newer and longer-term residents’ perceptions and actions in response to forest insect disturbance on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula: A longitudinal perspective

  Migration process has become increasingly important in recent research on population and the environment. A majority of the existing migration and environment literature has focused on the environmental causes and determinants of migration. With the largest rural-to-urban migration flow in world history

  and growing concerns about the environmental problems accompanying its fast economic development

  China provides a particularly important case for migration and environment research. This paper reviews major migration theories and recent research on environmental effects on migration

  with specific attention to the influences of environmental factors on rural-to-urban labor migration in China.

  Environmental Effects on Rural-to-Urban Migration in China

  Angelica Rosas-Huerta

  Jorgelina Hardoy

  Vulnerability has been considered as a focal topic in various fields of study relating to human–environmental interactions

  including climate change impacts

  disaster and risk

  and sustainable development. As hotspots for both the causes and consequences of climate change

  urban areas have become increasingly visible in recent vulnerability and adaptation research. The influencing factors of local populations’ responses to climate change hazards have been relatively understudied in recent literature on vulnerability to global environmental change. In this study

  we developed a synthetic conceptual framework of urban households’ responses to climate-related hazards

  and conducted a preliminary analysis of its applicability using household survey data from four major Latin American cities (Bogotá

  Colombia; Buenos Aires

  Argentina; Mexico City

  Mexico; and Santiago

  Chile).

  Household responses to climate-related hazards in four Latin American cities: A conceptual framework and exploratory analysis

  The human dimensions of environmental change across various spatial and temporal scales have formed a fast-growing field of study in the past decades. Given the large accumulation of scientific studies on this topic

  a logical research question is whether we can draw out common patterns of causal relationships from this diverse body of literature. Meta-analysis provides a particularly useful tool for summarizing and integrating results across studies. Although there has been a growing number of meta-studies on the interrelationships between social and environmental changes

  meta-analysis as a research strategy is still relatively underused in this field. Additionally

  few studies have systematically examined the set of meta-analytical methods suitable to investigate relevant research questions. We used a meta-analysis framework to review and extract data on analytical approaches from 43 meta-studies published in selected peer-reviewed environmental social science journals during 2000-2014.

  A Systematic Review and “Meta-Study” of Meta-Analytical Approaches to the Human Dimensions of Environmental Change

  Sigrid Debner

  Dongoh Joo

  Bernardo Trejos

  David Matarrita-Cascante

  Community development and related approaches have become prominent in academic circles

  resulting in the emergence and resurgence of related community-level notions. With the expansion of terms

  conceptual confusions have surfaced. The notion of community resilience has gone through this process

  as its development/understanding is still in progress. Community resilience has been misused/confused with other notions including community agency

  community vulnerability

  community adaptability

  and community capacity. Our goal here is to provide conceptual clarification to the term community resilience by reviewing and contrasting it with the above-mentioned notions.

  Conceptualizing community resilience: Revisiting conceptual distinctions

  John D’Ignazio

  Matthew Mayernik

  Lynne Davis

  Meta-analyses are studies that bring together data or results from multiple independent studies to produce new and over-arching findings. Current data curation systems only partially support meta-analytic research. Some important meta-analytic tasks

  such as the selection of relevant studies for review and the integration of research datasets or findings

  are not well supported in current data curation systems. To design tools and services that more fully support meta-analyses

  we need a better understanding of meta-analytic research. This includes an understanding of both the practices of researchers who perform the analyses and the characteristics of the individual studies that are brought together. In this study

  we make an initial contribution to filling this gap by developing a conceptual framework linking meta-analyses with data paths represented in published articles selected for the analysis.

  Variables as Currency: Linking Meta-Analysis Research and Data Paths in Sciences

  This paper explores whether the health risks related to air pollution and temperature extremes are spatially and socioeconomically differentiated within three Latin American cities: Bogota

  Colombia

  Mexico City

  Mexico

  and Santiago

  Chile.

  Exploration of health risks related to air pollution and temperature in three Latin American cities

  Hua

  Qin

  Sanjiu Enterprise Group

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  University of Missouri-Columbia

  Penn State University

  National Center for Atmospheric Research

  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  University of Illinois at Springfield

  Beijing City

  China

  Research Analyst

  China Biodiversity Working Group

  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  Beijing

  China

  Human Resource Manager

  Sanjiu Food and Brewery Investment Corporation

  Sanjiu Enterprise Group

  Columbia

  Missouri

  As an assistant professor in the MU Division of Applied Social Sciences

  I have the opportunity to implement my research program in environmental and natural resource sociology. One of my current projects involves studying communities that are vulnerable to natural ecosystem hazards. The National Sciences Foundation grant-funded project builds upon research conducted during the mid-2000s in north central Colorado

  an area with forests devastated by a mountain pine beetle infestation. Communities dependent on natural resources – such as the north central Colorado region – are particularly sensitive to environmental change. This research will determine how communities perceive risk and adapt over time after experiencing natural resource-related hazards. \n\nIn my position

  I also teach undergraduate and graduate students. My undergraduate courses center on the relationships among people

  society

  environment

  and sustainability. For graduate students

  I teach a course focused on research methods and design

  and graduate seminars on community

  natural resources

  and sustainable development. I also contribute as an affiliated faculty member to the University of Missouri’s Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Program; Conservation Biology Graduate Program; Population

  Education and Health Center; and Climate Change Research Center.

  Assistant Professor

  Division of Applied Social Sciences

  University of Missouri-Columbia

  State College

  Pennsylvania Area

  Graduate Research Assistant

  Population Research Institute & Dept of Agri Econ and Rural Soc

  Penn State University

  Springfield

  Illinois

  Assistant Professor

  Department of Environmental Studies

  University of Illinois at Springfield

  Urbana-Champaign

  Illinois Area

  Graduate Research Assistant; Research Associate

  Dept of Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  Boulder

  Colorado

  Post-doctoral Research Fellow

  Climate Science and Applications Program

  National Center for Atmospheric Research

  Special Issue on Community

  Natural Resources and Sustainability: An Interdisciplinary and International Dialogue

  Guest Editor

  Sustainability

  Editorial Board Member

  Society & Natural Resources

  Member

  Awards and Endowment Committee; Member

  Diversity Committee

  Rural Sociological Society

  International Association for Society and Natural Resources

  Editorial Board Member

  International Journal of Population Studies

  Council Member

  Chinese Association of Environmental Sociology