As a social scientist, I study the ways that landowners and natural resources specialists interact with scientific information. I help scientists and tool developers improve their communications and products.
As someone who works with both humans and the environment, it is not one skill that helps me. Instead, it’s the combination of several skills that is most valuable to my scientific research, including knowledge of social and natural sciences, as well as information technology.
What are the characteristics of people who are most likely to share climate information with landowners? What is the best way to reach these people?
I use Qualtrics software to design surveys that respond throughout the survey process to participants’ answers. I also use mapping programs such as Tableau Public and ArcGIS to create maps that show how results of these surveys vary geographically.
It was exciting to find effective climate messaging that reached people regardless of their beliefs on climate change. This discovery was important because we want to provide resources that make our lands safer. We also want lands that can quickly recover from potential damage. It’s important to test messages and understand which messages could have the most far-reaching impacts on land management.
As a child, I was fascinated by the natural world and wanted to study biology. As an adult, I realized that interactions between humans and the environment were just as important to environmental sustainability as biology and ecology. This realization led me to become a social scientist.
