Erika Svendsen

My pimary area of research is to better understand the role of individuals, civic groups and networked alliances within the context of disturbance and recovery.  My research helps identify the key drivers and levers that help to shape, create and sustain new forms of environmental governance. 


One of my most popular research projects is STEW-MAP, the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project.  The objective of STEW-MAP is to utilize social science methods to assess the social and spatial interactions among groups working to care for their environment.  STEW-MAP techniques display groups across a landscape or region, depicting social networks, spatial gaps and overlaps, and providing partnership data in order to strengthen the shared stewardship of public and private lands. STEW-MAP captures information about environmental stewardship through (1) inventory: administering an OMB-approved organizational survey; (2) spatial analysis: geospatial mapping of stakeholder groups; and (3) social network analysis: studying relationships among civic, private, and governmental organizations.  https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/STEW-MAP/

STEW-MAP is just one part of my larger research area which asks how environmental stewardship can play a role in recovery and restoration in light acute and chronic social ecolgoical disturbance? Natural resource stewardship includes many unique forms of caring for the environment and has many benefits, from the physical, to the communal, and the personal.  Large-scale social-ecological disturbances and disasters are becoming an increasingly common phenomenon. These events often require large-scale coordinated emergency response and recovery efforts; however, they also cause consideration of how to create more resilient and just communities. My current work focuses on natural resource stewardship as an investment in creating communities that are better able to prepare for, respond to, and recover from all forms of stressors.  See here for an on-line and assessible resource: Green Readiness, Response and Recovery: A Collaborative Synthesis https://www.thenatureofcities.com/grrr-book/.

Currently, I am working on research related to COVID-19 and how natural resrource mangers on our National Forests, State lands and City parks are adapting to distrubance through partnerships and civic engagment.   This work will be published and available in 2021. 

 

 

I am interested in amplifying the relationship between environmental governance, social ecological vulnerabilities and equitable social change. 

Understanding the reciprocity that exists between humans and the non-human world is essential not only to a healthy environment but to a vibrant, resilient and humane world.