Water Policy

Jeffrey Banister

Jeffrey
M
Banister
Title: 
Assistant Research Social Scientist, Southwest Center
Additional Titles and Departments: 
Assistant Editor, School of Geography and Development
Affiliate Faculty, Institute of the Environment
Related Departments, Schools or Colleges and/or Program(s): 
Education: 
Ph.D., Geography, University of Arizona
Phone: 
(520) 621-2484
Photo of Jeffrey Banister

I have a dual position, split between the Southwest Center and School of Geography and Development. As assistant editor of Journal of the Southwest (published by the Southwest Center), I have worked to build upon the university’s tradition of collaborative investigation and publication with Mexican institutions. JSW also publishes widely across the social sciences and humanities, focusing on northwest Mexico and the greater Southwest. My research and teaching interests range widely, from the geographies of institutions and rural development in Mexico and Latin America, to the connections between everyday life and the broader quest to create spaces for social justice and autonomous environmental politics. I am most concerned with state formation and development as socio-spatial and cultural processes that tie together often antagonistic ideas, places, identities, peoples, and things. During the pre-neoliberal era, Mexican statecraft remained focused on stabilizing meaning and practice around the uneven power dynamics of development and its radical reworkings of space. Following austerity and market liberalization, this role has waned, somewhat. But it is also being reconstituted in ways that simultaneously reinforce and demolish longstanding relationships between the state and countryside. Understanding the changing nature of this connection, and its implications for everyday life and livelihood, drives my research.

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Chester
F
Phillips
Degree Program: 
phd
Primary Department/Unit: 

Short Bio:

Chester (Chet) Phillips is a Ph.D. student in the interdisciplinary Arid Lands Resource Sciences program. He currently works as Graduate Assistant for Sustainability for the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. He has previously taught English and been a research assistant to Dr. Sharon Megdal at the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center (WRRC), where he worked to put together the Arizona-Israeli-Palestinian Water Management and Policy Workshop. Chet has also previously worked for the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution and, in 2004, as the Arizona state lead for Environmentalists for Kerry. Past awards include the Morris K. Udall Scholarship for Environmental Leadership and the Beth Rogers Graduate Fellowship in Nonfiction Writing. He holds a B.S. in Environmental Science, a B.A. in Creative Writing, and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona.

Research Interests:

Chet’s research interests lie at the intersection of conservation biology, environmental policy, and collaborative problem solving. In particular, his work focuses on protection of the lower San Pedro Watershed and natural resource planning at the community level for conservation and adaptation to resource scarcity and uncertainty.

Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis: 

Collaborative Conservation Planning in the Lower San Pedro Watershed

Expected Graduation Date: 
December, 2013

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Lily
A
House-Peters
Photo of Lily A House-Peters
Degree Program: 
phd
Primary Department/Unit: 
Other Departments or Unit Affiliations: 

My research interests focus on the complex interactions and feedbacks between social, technological, and ecological systems, which effectively influence water supply, demand, wastewater disposal and reuse, and inequities in the distribution of water resources. I am interested in better understanding how human decision-making, across and between multiple social, political, economic, and legal hierarchies, directly and indirectly affects the urban hydrological cycle at differing temporal scales.

Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis: 

My dissertation research examines the impact of large-scale, centralized water infrastructure investments on water security, adaptive management capacity, and vulnerability to climate variability, including drought and flood, in urban Australia.

Advisor(s): 
Expected Graduation Date: 
May, 2014

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Shannon
E
McNeil
Photo of Shannon E. McNeil
Degree Program: 
msc

I am interestd in the effects of habitat fragmentation and isolation on avian dispersal, and how to improve current habitat restoration practices within the current agricultural landscape. I am developing genetic markers in yellow-billed cuckoos as a tool to measure current western riparian connectivity.

Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis: 

Yellow-billed cuckoo Coccyzus americanus population genetics within a fragmented landscape.

Advisor(s): 
Expected Graduation Date: 
December, 2012

Joel A Biederman

Joel
A
Biederman
Photo of Joel Biederman
Degree Program: 
phd
Primary Department/Unit: 

Joel's training is in civil and environmental engineering, with specialization in natural systems for wastewater treatment.  After a stint teaching high school science and math, Joel has returned to school seeking greater understanding of the water resources issues facing the West under the dual pressures of climate change and population growth.  He is particularly intersted in the translation of scientific results for application by decision makers.  Joel's present reserach seeks to describe the effects of Mountain Pine Beetle infestation on mountain catchments, where the much of the West's water falls as snow. 

Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis: 

Joel is organizing his disseration research around the following questions:

Topic:  Impacts of Mountain Pine Beetle Infestation On the Hydrology of Mountain Catchments

  • How do snow water inputs to mountain catchments vary with severity of and time since infestation?
  • How does MPB infestation impact plot scale and catchment scale biogeochemistry?
  • How can water managers water policy professionals apply emerging MPB research results for improved decision making? 
Advisor(s): 
Expected Graduation Date: 
May, 2014

David Tecklin

David
Tecklin
Degree Program: 
phd
Primary Department/Unit: 

My research interests center on environmental politics and policy, property rights, conservation,natural resource industries and environmental change with a particular focus on Latin America. My PhD project analyzes private and public efforts to regulate the use of forests and coastal areas in southern Chile. My earlier work included an MA thesis on the mahogany frontier in the Bolivian Amazon, and a BA thesis on the role of local activism in shaping national forest policy in California, as well as extensive work on ecological conservation and environmental policy in Chile. 

Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis: 

My thesis focuses on private environmental governance and property rights in coastal and temperate rain forest areas of Southern Chile.

Advisor(s): 
Expected Graduation Date: 
January, 2013

Danny Shahar

Danny
Shahar
Photo of Danny Shahar
Degree Program: 
phd
Primary Department/Unit: 
Other Departments or Unit Affiliations: 
Minor Program: 

I came to the University of Arizona in the Fall of 2009.  I have a BA in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I wrote my senior honors thesis under Harry Brighouse on the implications of global climate change for individual rights.  I have also worked as a researcher for Iridian Asset Management, LLC., focusing in part on emerging technologies in the energy industry. 

I currently work in environmental philosophy, with a strong inclination towards interdisciplinary research.  My research interests involve on a number of different subjects:

  • The psychological mechanisms underlying environmental concern, the evolutionary functions of those mechanisms, and the potential challenges for environmental ethics in the exaptation of these mechanisms for their new roles in our moral psychology.
  • The roles of romantic, not-all-things-considered viewpoints in our moral psychology and in our all-things-considered ethical positions.
  • The relationship between Hayekian market liberalism and environmentalist arguments for protecting or preserving natural systems due to their instrumental importance and complexity.
  • The history of thought regarding natural resource scarcity, fragility, and complexity.
  • Virtue-ethical approaches to thinking about collective responsibility

As one might expect, I am not nearly an expert on all of these areas.  But if you are interested in thinking about some of these issues (or don't know what they mean), I would love to hear from you!

Advisor(s): 
Expected Graduation Date: 
January, 2014

North American Monsoon Paleoclimatology from Tree Rings

Daniel
Griffin
Photo of Daniel Griffin
Degree Program: 
phd
Primary Department/Unit: 
Other Departments or Unit Affiliations: 
Minor Program: 

I am an environmental scientist working on issues of climate, water, hazards, and natural resources management. A Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona in Tucson, I am majoring in Geography and minoring in Global Change. My mentor and advisor is Dr. Connie A. Woodhouse. My research appointment is with the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. I am affiliated with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest and the UA Institute of the Environment. My graduate studies are supported by a U.S. EPA STAR Fellowship.

Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis: 

Tree-ring reconstructions of North American monsoon variability in the southwestern U.S.

Expected Graduation Date: 
May, 2013

Edella Schlager

Edella
Schlager
Title: 
Professor, School of Government and Public Policy
Additional Titles and Departments: 
Affiliated Faculty, Geography
Affiliated Faculty, School of Natural Resources and Environment
Affiliate Faculty, Institute of the Environment
Education: 
PhD, Political Science, University of Indiana, 1990
Phone: 
(520) 621-5840
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Edella Schlager's research focuses on public policy, political theory, and natural resource policy. Her research interests include institutional arrangements that communities create to govern their use of renewable natural resources, cooperation among resource users, and self-governing arrangements.

Environmental Themes: 

Carol M Rose

Carol
M
Rose
Title: 
Ashby Lohse Professor of Water and Natural Resources, Law College
Additional Titles and Departments: 
Gordon Bradford Tweedy Professor of Law and Organization
Emeritus, Yale Law School
Related Departments, Schools or Colleges and/or Program(s): 
Education: 
J.D., University of Chicago, 1977.
Phone: 
(520) 621-5544
Photo of Carol m Rose
Environmental Themes: 

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