SEES Fellows: Sustainability and Safety in the Pacific West's National Parks

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

In this Award from the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows Program) Dr. Alice B. Kelly from the University of California - Berkeley will investigate the ways in which crime, both resource related and non-resource related crime, serve as threats to ecological and recreational sustainability in the Nation's National Parks. This award has support from the Directorate for Biological Sciences, the Directorate for Geosciences and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. Dr. Kelly will study the correlation of crime rates with: (1) the geographic location of each protected area; (2) the extent of government and external funding for national parks; (3) specific Federal and State laws/policies that impact National Parks; and (4) the ecological condition and visitation rates of specific parks. Research will concentrate on National Parks in the western United States. The aim of studies like that proposed in this work is to develop improved policies to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the Nation's National Parks. Dr. Kelly will be working with collaborators Prof. Maggi Kelly of the Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management of UC-Berkeley as well as Rene S. Buehl of the National Park Service. Dr. Kelly will also work with software developers and other professionals in the Department of the Interior to improve the current Incident Reporting System to include the kind of GIS data that will be produced in this work. This project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. With SEES Fellows support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish themselves in an independent research career related to sustainability.