From 2016-2018 I was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (URExSRN), and I continue to be involved with the SRN. Our network is broadly focused on improving the resilience of cities to the extreme weather events (e.g. floods, heat waves) anticipated to be more common with climate change. Our network includes cities across North and South America. Our team of researchers is an interdisciplinary group of ecologists, engineers, social scientists, and others. We also are working closely with practitioners in our network cities to devise practical and feasible solutions for enhancing resilience to these extreme events.
Multiple types of green infrastructure in NYC
As a postdoc, my primary role in the SRN focused on comparing our cities' current resilience capacity related to these extreme events. I have worked on inventorying green infrastructure across the cities. This includes both engineered green infrastructure for stormwater such as bioretention basins, as well as green spaces such as parks and urban forests. We ultimately would like to use this inventory to model ecosystem services- such as stormwater retention- provided by these features, as well as to understand how green infrastructure implementation varies across the network cities. I have also been performing similar geospatial analysis of vacant property in our network cities, using land cover and soil assessment of vacant lots to understand how these spaces may contribute to stormwater retention or heat mitigation. My SRN colleagues will use this information to work with city practitioners and envision new strategies for enhancing urban resilience to extreme events.
Specific completed or ongoing projects include:
Specific completed or ongoing projects include:
- How do various disciplines define extreme events? (w/ URExSRN task force) New publication out here
- Assessment of topographic indices as indicators of nuisance flooding locations in New York City and Baltimore (w/ Christa Kelleher @ Syracuse University)
- Temporal evolution of green stormwater infrastructure strategies in Baltimore, Phoenix, and Portland (w/ Marissa Matsler @ Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies). New publication out here
- Does the 'urban stream syndrome' apply to Arizona streams? (w/ Rebecca Hale @ Idaho State and Nancy Grimm & Stevan Earl @ Arizona State)
- Stormwater retention potential in vacant lots in Phoenix and other URExSRN cities
