March 29, 2018

Guest lecture on water and land use decisions set for April

by Tim Crosby

Kelli LarsonCARBONDALE, Ill. – An urban planner and researcher on urban sustainability and residential landscapes will speak at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in April.

Kelli L. Larson, associate professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University, will give a talk titled “Social-Ecological Dynamics in Residential Landscapes of the U.S. – Implications for Urban Sustainability.”

The event is set for 1:30 p.m. on April 20, in room 161 in Lawson Hall and is sponsored by the Department of Geography and Environmental resources. The event is free and open to the public.

Strong background in research

Larson earned her doctorate in resource geography from Oregon State University in 2005 and joined ASU the same year. She is currently an associate professor in both the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, as well as the School of Sustainability there.

Larson is an investigator in National Science Foundation projects including the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research project and the Decision Center for a Desert City, where she leads an integrated effort to understand human-environment relations for water governance and urban sustainability. Her research focuses on risk perceptions and attitudes, water management and decision-making and urban ecology and land management.

Lecture will address water, urban ecosystems

Focusing on Phoenix and other cities across the country, Larson’s lecture will address the complex social-ecological dynamics associated with land management in urban ecosystems. Her research findings will examine decision tradeoffs, counterintuitive relationships between residents’ values and choices, as well as legacy effects in decision making. She also will discuss the motivations and constraints for land management, along with the implications for sustainability.