School of Sustainability Research Seminars
The School of Sustainability hosts a regular seminar series that brings together faculty and students engaged in sustainability research to present and discuss their work.
Please join us for some or all of these great seminars this year, and feel free to review our previous events.
For those interested in giving a presentation, please email Danae Hernandez-Cortes at [email protected] and Jennifer Vanos at [email protected].
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Spring 2025
Diane Pataki, Chief Scientist & Vice President for Science
John Kanter, Senior Wildlife Biologist
Rebeca Quiñonez-Piñon, Senior Scientist
Corina Newsome, Conservation Scientist
April 2, 2025
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 190
Founded in the midst of the Great Depression, the National Wildlife Federation had an improbable beginning as a coalition of local conservation clubs intent on reversing the nation’s rapid environmental degradation. Despite the severe economic and social crisis that gripped the United States in the 1930s, the conservation movement made some of its greatest gains during the most unstable and uncertain periods in American history during the Depression, and again in the early 1970s following social and economic change in the 1960s. Now we are facing a new era of sweeping upheavals to the U.S. government, economy, and infrastructure systems. Given the dramatic proposed changes to environmental protections, education, and scientific research, what is the future of science-based conservation in the United States? The Science Team of the National Wildlife Federation will give a joint presentation on the ongoing work of the Federation to ensure the future of wildlife, nature, and people in a rapidly changing environment. Diane Pataki will give an overview of the role of sustainability and conservation science in the work of environmental NGOs, and how they are responding to disruptions in federal funding and science agencies. Rebeca Quiñonez-Piñon will discuss current efforts to ensure that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed rule to list the monarch butterfly as a threatened species is approved, allowing NWF to boost native habitat restoration for species recovery. John Kanter will discuss the key role that state wildlife agencies play in implementing these conservation and environmental protections at the local level. At even more local scales, Corina Newsome will discuss the growing role of community-based and community-engaged conservation to foster just, equitable, and evidenced-based outcomes for people and nature. In the face of continuing political, social, and environmental change, NWF will continue to advance and adapt national, state, and local efforts that support the Federation’s ambitious plan to recover wildlife and habitat, foster climate solutions, and work towards environmental justice for communities across the U.S.
Dean Jeffrey Cohen
Arizona State University
April 9, 2025
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH Auditorium
In a conversation that crosses the millennia about life during anthropogenic climate change, I will share some of the divergent histories that have been sailed by Noah and his ark of conservation. Themes include the price of safety; exclusion and endurance; thinking beyond resignation; and creativity during catastrophe.
Tyson Terry
Arizona State University
April 30, 2025
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 560
Dr. Terry will review many of the ongoing climatic trends and anthropogenic changes that are occurring in the western United States and how they affect native plant systems. He will show how novel climate is likely to alter reproductive success from seeds, impact growth, and influence the success of invasive plant species. His research uses a combination of field studies, lab work, microclimate models, and satellite imagery to understand how small-scale processes play out over large spatial scales.
Fall 2024
James Smallcombe (University of Sydney), Nicole Vargas (Australian National University), Jenni Vanos (ASU), Nicholas Ravanelli (National University of Singapore)
August 28, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
The complex nature of the impacts of extreme heat and associated human responses, both behavioral and physiological, demand convergence research that addresses a lack of standardized approaches available to study and translate effective heat adaptation strategies. The recently funded “Global Centers Track 2: Heat Adaptation” seeks to strengthen society’s ability to manage and adapt to extreme heat across countries, climates, and cultures. This presentation will provide an overview of ongoing research as part of the Global Center across multiple countries, as well as the fundamental understanding of thermal physiology and behavioral adaptations during extreme heat exposure across diverse populations. We will address research and cross-sectoral implementation gaps that must be filled to fully support adaptive capacity in the heat and thus reduce heat vulnerability.
Adam Wiechman, PhD Candidate, ASU School of Sustainability
September 25, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
Infrastructure, whether it is a water pipe, stop sign, or court of law, mediates the flows of materials, people, and information that small and large societies rely on for their collective well-being amid variation in their environments. Yet, the quality of infrastructure systems reflects the degree to which society invests in them. Given myriad challenges facing modern infrastructure systems induced by accelerating social and environmental changes, technical and policy experts have provided various recommendations for investment in built, natural, or soft infrastructures. However, focus on investment recommendations has left a gap in our understanding of how the governance processes responsible for infrastructure investment affect not only whether a recommendation is feasible, but whether the governance system, itself, can deliver desired sustainability goals in an uncertain social-environmental future.
My work examines the scaffolding of these governance processes, institutions, and how the institutional structure underlying infrastructure investment affects the ability of systems to track sustainability goals like resilience and equity. I examine this through an interdisciplinary approach that builds on intellectual traditions in political economy, public policy, public administration, and coupled human-natural systems and leverages computational modeling of infrastructure systems and empirical investigation of how policymakers make decisions and collaborate. In this talk, I first present an overview of my doctoral research examining this question in the context of urban water systems in Arizona, including a computational model of urban water operations and investment decisions and an empirical study of how the structure of water user associations in Arizona affects collaboration among water providers. Then, I discuss my ongoing theoretical work beyond urban water towards a general understanding of the political economics of public infrastructure systems. I conclude with my future vision for research on sustainable infrastructure governance committed to the creation and communication of knowledge via participatory research.
Rebecca Kariuki, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, ASU School of Sustainability
October 2, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH Auditorium
Land use and land cover change (LULCC) occurs in response to interactions between local human actions, policies, regional and global markets, climate change impacts and environmental factors that occur at varying scales. On one hand, LULCC occurs to meet the food and infrastructural needs of growing populations; on the other hand, LULCC often fragments wildlife habitats, drives biodiversity loss, and affects nature’s contributions to people. Insights on the synergies and trade-offs between food production, development and conservation are necessary to support sustainable land uses that avoid unintended consequences. In this talk, I will discuss my research on LULCC impacts on wildlife, livestock, and communities at the Kenya-Tanzania borderland region. This region covers several ecosystem gradients and supports high biomass of wildlife and livestock than most ecosystems globally. Specifically, I will discuss how climate variability and insecure land tenure drives land use change and habitat fragmentation, how payment of conservation subsidies can enhance land sharing between wildlife and livestock, preserve the cultural heritage of communities, and improve communities’ attitudes toward wildlife, and how multi-stakeholder perspectives and spatial modelling can develop future LULCC scenarios and assess their implications on biodiversity and societies. This talk will highlight the value of participatory approaches in understanding diverse, plausible futures in the face of uncertainty and the contribution of place-based research in addressing global sustainability challenges of land use change and biodiversity loss.
Dr. Rebecca Kariuki is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Sustainability, Arizona State University (ASU), USA. She is also an affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences, Nairobi, Kenya. Her research integrates interdisciplinary perspectives from the natural and social sciences to understand land use systems in East and Southern Africa savannas, the implications of land use change on biodiversity and rural livelihoods, and potential pathways to achieving sustainable land use systems in future. She engages diverse stakeholders, conducts ecological surveys, and utilizes GIS and spatial modeling to assess trade-offs in land use management of multiple use landscapes in Africa.
Prior to joining ASU, Rebecca was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Arusha, Tanzania and the University of York in the UK, a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich, Germany and a Climate Change Fellow at the African Institute for Mathematical Science in Kigali, Rwanda.
Edward Chu, Arizona State University Special Advisor to the President
Environment and Climate Solutions
October 9, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH Auditorium
Join Edward Chu, Special Advisor to the President on Environment and Climate Solutions, as he shares his insights on risk management decision-making based on his experience at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Chu will explore the complexities of regulatory decisions, highlighting the integration of law, science, politics, economics, and environmental justice to drive sustainable outcomes. Explore with him the challenges of addressing both known negative environmental impacts and unforeseen consequences and discover possible strategies for achieving more sustainable environmental outcomes. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable perspectives on how regulatory decision-making can shape a more sustainable future.
Mokshda Kaul, Arizona State University
November 6, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH Auditorium
Abstract: The clean energy transition is more than just a means for climate change mitigation. It represents an opportunity to transform energy systems while contributing to a more just and equitable world. However, current approaches to the energy transition that only view it as a climate solution overlook the transition’s unintended negative consequences. The energy transition comes with its benefits, such as reduced emissions, jobs, and innovations, as well as its costs, such as the displacement of fossil fuel workers and the extractive practices for the production of clean energy. Both benefits and costs are often inequitably distributed, creating societal and environmental costs that remain unaddressed by conventional energy policy. By paying attention to these concerns, energy transition policies can leverage the transition’s potential to further the transition while advancing justice and equity.
As an interdisciplinary energy policy scholar, I combine economics and political science theories with mixed methods of analysis to study how policies can incorporate these concerns and drive inclusive and effective energy transitions. I use these diverse lenses to examine energy and climate policy from design to implementation to impact. In this seminar, I will provide an overview of my doctoral research, focusing on two main projects: 1) a comparative case study of Illinois and New York to understand the development of inclusive advocacy efforts for clean energy legislation and 2). a mixed methods study to evaluate the outcomes from an existing energy policy that addresses inclusivity by financially incentivizing the adoption of residential solar among low and middle-income households in New York. Beyond presenting my dissertation work, I will also briefly discuss my future research agenda, which intends to make theoretical contributions to how justice in the energy transition is conceptualized and inform policies for the inclusion of those excluded from climate solutions, such as the energy transition.
Bio: Mokshda employs interdisciplinary approaches, drawing on her training in economics and political science, to analyze energy policies from their creation to their outcomes. Her research focuses on policies related to the distribution of costs and benefits from the energy transition. This includes clean energy production, provisions for a just transition, implementation of federal energy and environmental justice mandates, economic revitalization plans for coal communities, and the adoption of new energy technologies. Utilizing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods—such as interviews, content analysis, process tracing, statistical analysis, spatial analysis, surveys, econometrics, and microeconomics—her work offers crucial insights for designing policies that promote justice in the energy transition.
Melissa Guardaro, Arizona State University
November 13, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 190
Melissa Guardaro
Bio and Headsot
June, 2024
Abstract: Last summer’s heat is a glimpse at our warming future. Managing extreme heat, an increasingly complex issue, extends beyond jurisdictions and institutions and has an urgent, short-term emergency component coupled with the need for long-term mitigation and adaptation. We know that extreme heat disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations resulting in avoidable deaths and illnesses. Yet, the voices and needs of frontline communities in extreme heat planning and strategy implementation are often lacking. This presentation will highlight ongoing efforts to increase capacity in highly heat-vulnerable communities, detail the heat governance shift underway, discuss community-first emergency solutions, as well as state and federal policy recommendations.
Bio: Melissa Guardaro is an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and is also the Associate Director, Resilience Hubs at the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER). Her research focuses on adaptation, equity, vulnerability, urban policy, and governance for the mitigation and adaptation to extreme heat and urban heat island effects. She is currently co-leading the Arizona Heat Resilience Workgroup which coordinates regional heat mitigation and adaptation efforts. Melissa founded the Arizona Cooling Center working group, whose mission is to use data to inform cooling center strategies and to promote collaboration across the public, private and non-profit sectors. She is working to create neighborhood heat solutions that improve thermal comfort and public health outcomes with the cities of Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa through the development of resilience hubs and hyper-local climate plans. She completed a Ph.D. in Sustainability from Arizona State University, a master’s degree in Sustainability and Environmental Management from Harvard, and an MBA from Columbia University.
Spring 2024
Elke Kellner
Arizona State University
January 24, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
Despite near-global consensus on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), unresolved and politically contentious trade-offs between SDGs have undermined the implementation. Conflictual trade-off situations between SDGs are known as key barriers to reaching the goals and call for new innovative governance approaches. In this talk, Elke Kellner, along with her students, shared insights about the governance of conflictual trade-off situations in their case studies in the US, e.g., Grand Canyon (AZ), Chaco Culture National Historical Park (NM), Bears Ears National Monument (UT), and Resolution Copper Mine (AZ). All case studies involve Indigenous communities, requiring specific governance approaches.
Jose Lobo
Arizona State University
February 7th, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
The question is no longer if we can halt global warming at 1.5°C but how large the overshoot will be and for how long we will be in an overshoot phase. Adapting to the consequences of climate change is a now a pressing task in many parts of the world and the urgency of adaptation will grow as the frequency and severity of the consequences of climate change increase. As concentrators of population and human activities, cities worldwide are at the forefront of experiencing the effects of climate change—marginalized, poor, politically underrepresented and historically excluded urban populations are at great risk. Achieving sustainable urban development necessitates urban adaptation to climate change. In the Global South, where the process of urbanization is still unfolding and where urbanization needs to continue its historic role as a driver of socioeconomic development, cities present both a major challenge as well as an opportunity for focusing on climate and development synergies. Realizing the possible synergies will require knowledge and training gaps to be addressed. In this talk (intended to spark vigorous dialogue) I will highlight some of the gaps and their implications for the School of Sustainability in particular and Sustainability academia more generally. I will also describe an incipient effort to bring the insights about and experiences in building resilient communities accumulated by informal urban communities (“slums”) into the emerging global discussion on tackling climate and SDG action together.
Karen Fisher-Vanden
Penn State University
February 28th, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
Abstract
Exploring risk and response behaviors is a major scientific challenge for understanding integrated impacts of climate change, landscape evolution, and the resilience of complex systems. Understanding and modeling multiscale, multisystem response options and cross-system implications requires not only an understanding of multisector teleconnections in the coupled human and Earth system, but also how interconnected systems are exposed to hazards that create vulnerabilities and risks for society and how societies respond to these risks. In this presentation, I will highlight work being done as part of the Program on Coupled Human and Earth Systems (PCHES), a transdisciplinary research consortium of nine leading universities funded under the U.S. Department of Energy’s MultiSector Dynamics (MSD) program. The primary objective of the PCHES project is to answer two critical, and interrelated research questions: (1) How can we characterize and quantify the propagation of hazards (flood, water scarcity, wildfire) through the coupled human and earth system, affecting the exposure and vulnerability of populations and human built systems to these hazards? (2) How do these populations and physical systems respond to these risks and how do those responses feed back to the fully coupled, co-evolutionary human and natural Earth system?
Bio
Karen Fisher-Vanden is Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics and Public Policy, and Director of the Institute for Sustainable Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Science (SAFES) at Pennsylvania State University. Professor Fisher-Vanden holds a B.S in Mathematics/Computer Science and a B.A. in Economics both from UC Davis, a M.S. in Management Science from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report Working Group III, and a previous member of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Product Development Advisory Committee and lead author of a congressionally-mandated CCSP report on global change scenarios. She is President of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) where she previously served on the Board of Directors, and was a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board on Economy-wide modeling. Her areas of research include economic and integrated assessment modeling for climate change impacts and policy analysis. She has led a number of large externally-funded research programs and is currently co-Director and Principal Investigator of the Program on Coupled Human and Earth Systems (PCHES), a large Cooperative Research Agreement with the US Department of Energy.
Edward Chu
Special Advisor to the President | Environment and Climate Solutions
Affiliate Global Futures Scholar | Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
Arizona State University
March 13th, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
Watch the recording on YouTube
Edward Chu, Special Advisor to the President on Environment and Climate Solutions, will share his experience in environmental policy decision making from his work at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Chu will discuss the critical role of environmental policy in addressing environmental outcomes; the complexity of public policy decision making; and identify knowledge gaps, opportunities, and challenges faced by decision makers.
April 3rd, 2024
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
Watch the recording on YouTube
Decolonizing the Relational Turn in Sustainability: Walking to Unlearn and Relearn
Speaker: Brian Grant
This project explores relational sustainability research through a personal experience walking a popular wilderness trail here in Arizona that has been exposed as part of a forced removal event in 1875, known as the Yavapai-Apache Exodus. I engaged with a relational walking methodology called ‘walking-with’, along with arts-based methods, to create space for relating with land as an agentic being and teacher. Though I set out with academic intentions, the land guided me through a series of disruptions that invited me to see myself more clearly in relationship to land, colonization and research.
Icy intersections: Worldview-based decision making in Arctic frozen-commons governance under climate change
Speaker: Leah Shaffer
“Frozen Commons” are landscapes of ice, snow, and permafrost that are collectively managed by Indigenous Peoples, local communities, governments, and non-local stakeholders. Multi-level governance is integral to the future of frozen commons stewardship, as effective decisions require input from many jurisdictional levels. I investigate the role of worldviews on multi-level decision-making, with a focus on how worldviews lead to conflict and consensus among rights holders and stakeholders in frozen-commons governance.
Fall 2023
Data Humanization Collective
September 6th, 2023
12:00pm Arizona timeWCPH 107
“Data Humanization” is a performance-based practice that plays against and with the increasing importance of “data” or “information” in modern lives. It was developed over the past decade by a member of our collective and recently evolved through the Indigenous Sustainability Solutions course in fall 2022 as a group practice. In countries with easy access to money and comfort, we daily encounter profound tragedy and loss in reports: numbers of victims of diverse types of violence; percentages of native languages lost; hectares of burned forest, etc. The effect of this can be apathy and a feeling of overwhelming hopelessness also known as compassion fatigue. Data Humanization Collective has found that forging a physical relationship with a representative number can inspire new ways of knowing, renew our sense of agency, and connect us to one another and the world. When performed with a spirit of humility, it is also a powerful tool of atonement and reconciliation. They brought this methodological and epistemological offering to the Autonomies in Practice Gathering in San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, México in March 2023 and hope to share reflections of this praxis with you.
Oscar Melo
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
October 4th, 2023
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107
The WEF nexus approach is an integrated framework that can be used for analyzing development options in the context of climate change. Integrated nexus modelling toolkits for evaluating adaptation actions will be presented using examples from South America that emphasize different elements of the nexus. These examples will also discuss how adding the environmental and socioeconomic dimensions to this framework can help build more robust adaptation strategies.
Spring 2023
Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science
Arizona State University
February 22nd, 2023
12:00pm Arizona time
WCPH 107