Completed

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Dry cracked soil

Hazard response and slow-onset risks in infrastructure management

Project Summary

Climate change necessitates major changes in infrastructure siting, design, and operations. Successful adaptation of infrastructure management requires overcoming thorny institutional challenges including path dependency and isomorphic pressures that inhibit major shifts in norms and practices. Hazards have been posited as a potential trigger for changing long-standing institutions because they can upend stable system states. However, research on the ability of hazards to shift norms and practices is still nascent and focuses on rapid-onset disasters like floods, hurricanes, or fires.

High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing Advocacy

Project Summary

Marginalized individuals are less likely to participate or have their interests represented in political processes than historically privileged individuals. Interest groups are considered the best means to address this gap, but there is little research on the role of interest groups in mobilizing people to directly participate in political processes, particularly in marginalized communities.

Local Government Policy

Project Summary

This is an umbrella project for several different research efforts focused on the adoption and implementation of local government environmental policies. A central theoretical focus of this project is how local government institutions such as the structure of city councils and the mayor/city manager office mediates the influence of interest groups on policy decisions. We are also interested in how the environmental and energy policies we study are connected to the broader of idea of sustainability.

Integrated Regional Water Management

Project Summary

Integrated Regional Water Management Planning (IRWMP) in California is the product of a state funded grant program, which requires diverse water management interests to participate in the collaborative development of regional water management plans in order to qualify for grant funding. Broadly, our study of IRWMP in the San Francisco Bay Area seeks to identify factors that contribute to success in collaborative, multi-stakeholder planning processes.

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Heard of cows

Climate Change and Agriculture

Project Summary

his project examines agriculture and climate change with a focus on both mitigation and adaptation. In particular, we are looking at the variables that influence farmer and agricultural industry adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation practices. Multiple factors will affect the adoption and innovation of practices in agriculture for mitigation and adaptation to climate change including information sources, climate change perceptions, policy structures, land management strategies, and economic and market drivers.