My research interests lie in the relationships between societies and the environment and how each shape the other. My research focuses on the socioeconomic production of health and disease and how environmental health issues are contested by scientists, regulators, and citizens. My research projects tend to focus on the environmental and public health impacts of technological disasters and the individual and community efforts at recovery.
My research dissertation research focuses on collaborative and participatory applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (R/S) technologies to improve communication and use of scientific knowledge for wildfire planning and management. I am also a research associate for the Regional Center for Sustainable Economic Development through Arizona Cooperative Extension, where I conduct research to help identify the most sustainable areas for renewable energy development throughout the state using GIS modeling. And I love bicycles
Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis:
Fire Futures In The Southwest: Using Geospatial Technologies to Bridge The Gap Between Science and Decision-Making [working title]
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
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.
After interning with the Nevada division of the Bureau of Land Management (Conservation and Management program, 2007), then interning for National Wildlife Federation's public affairs office and working for another year in Washington, DC, on climate policy, I decided to return to science and academics. I am interested in how and when similar species can coexist, which drives biodiversity and its changes.
Topic or title of your dissertation/thesis:
Buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliarus syn Cenchrus ciliarus) is a perennial C4 grass native to Africa and Southwest Asia. It has been planted extensively for five decades in semi-arid regions, such as Australia, Brazil, and Sonora, for cattle forage. Over the past thirty years, however, buffelgrass has colonized ecosystems outside of the pasture, where it fills in bare space to become a fire hazard and decrease native vegetation diversity. This has become a serious problem in Southeastern Arizona, where buffelgrass does very well in the habitat of the iconic saguaro cactus and has fueled enormous wildfires.
I propose to develop a stage-structured model with variable growth and survival rates to investigate how buffelgrass may be excluding native vegetation. I will consider both resource competition and variable predation by granivores and herbivores as density-dependent mechanisms. I will also incorporate buffelgrass removal as an additional source of mortality, and ask at what level that mortality must be set in order to preserve native diversity, and how the native community should respond when buffelgrass is removed.
I propose to parameterize this model and test its predictions in a field experiment along the wildland-city border in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains just north of Tucson. I hope to begin pilot studies later in the spring of 2011.
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.
Professor Hershey has specialized in Indian affairs for nearly four decades, beginning with his work as staff attorney for the Fort Defiance Agency of Dinebeiina Nahilna Be Agaditahe (DNA Legal Services) on the Navajo Reservation. Since 1983, he has served as special litigation counsel and law enforcement legal advisor to the White Mountain Apache Tribe, and from 1994 to 1996 as special counsel to the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. Hershey also serves, now in his 10th year, as judge pro tempore for the Tohono O'odham; and deputy judge pro tempore for the Colorado River Indian Community Tribal Courts. Professor Hershey currently teaches the Indigenous Peoples Clinic course. He also teaches a Globalization and the Preservation/Transformation of Culture course, and has written extensively on that topic. His book Globalization and the Transformation of Cultures and Humanity: a Curriculum and Toolkit for the Efflorescence of Ecological Literacy in Legal and Business School Education can be found at EcoliterateLaw.com. He has assisted tribes in forming and revising tribal constitutions and has conducted numerous training workshops for tribal judges and tribal court personnel. He is a member of White Mountain Apache, Hopi, and Pascua Yaqui Tribal Courts, and is licensed to practice in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal District Court for the District of Arizona, and the Arizona and Montana State Bars.
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!
