 My primary research interests include climate change adaptation, impacts of sea level rise and extreme weather events on coastal populations, collective management of common-pool resources, and policy and practice related to conservation and sustainability. I am currently collaborating with Brian Burke (Appalachian State University) on a project that integrates political ecology and ethnoecology to more closely examine how people perceive and understand climate change, particularly how they use biodiversity as indicators of change. This work is affiliated with the Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research program and forms part of an international comparative project, the Programme Interdisciplinaire sur les indicateurs Autochtones de la Faune et de la Flore (PI - Anne Sourdril). Our book Changing Climate, Changing Worlds was released by Springer Nature in May 2020. Closer to home, Brian Orland and I are wrapping up a project funded by NSF and Georgia Sea Grant to examine the impacts of Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Irma on the population of coastal Georgia. We completed more than 60 interviews less than six months after Hurricane Matthew and surveyed an additional 1,000 residents. In the weeks following Irma, we conducted follow up surveys and spoke with 20 of our original interviewees. From this work we are learning more about how people view their adaptation options, including migration away from the coast. Products of this work include an article on how hurricanes affect migration plans and another on ways of assessing social vulnerability to extreme events. Other book chapters and articles are currently in review. This work has also grown into a collaboration that includes Stephen Berry and that uses augmented and virtual realities to explore environmental pasts, presents, and futures with research participants. If you are on the Georgia coast, download and try our app YouARHere, and let us know what you think. In addition to working in the southeastern United States, I continue to be active in the Basque region of France. My dissertation research centered on the implementation of the European Union's Habitats Directive in the province of Xiberoa (Soule). This directive creates a pan-European network of sites, called Natura 2000, to be managed for ecological, social, and economic sustainability. For many years, however, it was strongly resisted by local land mangers and resource users. My dissertation explains the context of that resistance, discusses the particularities of implementing a conservation project in an area with a strong common property regime, and examines conceptualizations of success among various actors. Since that time, I have continued to work in Xiberoa, primarily looking at agricultural policy, multi-functional agriculture, and marketing of agricultural products in specialty markets. In May and October of 2019, I worked with Brian Burke and Anne Sourdril to conduct workshops with farmers and researchers from multiple disciplines, with funding from the FACE Foundation and NSF, to explore how local and alternative food systems in southwestern France and in southern Appalachia may or may not contribute to climate resilience. This work is ongoing, and we are working in close collaboration with farmers as we design a large-scale research proposal. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
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