Active Projects
Social-Environmental History of the Miami River
The Miami River has played an important role in many historical events and developments in South Florida. The river served as a life source for the native Tequesta people, bore witness to conflict during European arrival and the Seminole Wars in the 1500-1800s, and was the frontier of homesteaders in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including Mary Brickell and Julia Tuttle. During the 20th century, the Miami River became a severely degraded system following years of use as an urban dumping area. However, in the past two decades, the river has started to gain more recognition as an urban waterway and destination spot. Research on the Miami River in Florida remains limited. Our lab’s research fills that gap through examination of the social-ecological dynamics of this river. An ongoing project, initiated by former graduate student Daniela Daniele, explores the Miami River’s history through the lenses of ecological and social connectivity. This project involves: (1) compilation of information on historical conditions, human uses, and current status of the Miami River, and (2) analysis of temporal trends in water quality conditions over the past 50 years. This project aims to raise awareness among today’s inhabitants of Miami of the river’s early and continued importance to South Florida.
Place Based Meanings and Attachments within an Urban Landscape: The Case for the Miami River
Place is the setting for life’s actions. It is where we conduct our day-to-day activities, where we travel to, and where we and our ancestors cross paths. After we have long or intense experiences with them, places can acquire great personal meaning. In the era of climate change, a burning question emerges: what happens when landscape change threatens place-based meanings and attachments? This is the case for the Miami River. Because of the important role that the Miami River has played as an economic power engine in the last century, its degraded form is being revitalized into a commercial and luxurious residential hotspot. This transformation is bringing in a flux of new residents, while older residents are left to readjust to all the changes occuring to the river and their neighborhood. Led by Melissa Lau, former graduate student and now research associate, this work focuses on how residents truly feel about the river and if or how river development has impacted them personally. Specifically, she is interested in finding out whether residents have any emotional attachment to this urbanized waterway and if these attachments have or are changing due to river development. Using qualitative methods, she hopes to present a spectrum of these emotional attachments and highlight how the interaction between humans and the natural or built environment may affect environmental quality and social well-being.
Engagement in South Florida environmental restoration
In the United States, funding and prioritization for restoration projects has been inequitable for decades. Restoration priorities are often concentrated in rural or more affluent areas, neglecting urban streams and natural areas where low-income and people of color are concentrated. This dynamic further contributes to existing environmental injustice by overlooking heavily altered urban ecosystems as sites for potential restoration. In South Florida, this pattern persists. Everglades Ecosystem Restoration is prioritized as a primary restoration goal, while the impacts that degraded water quality and accessibility to natural areas have on social systems are often overlooked. Graduate student Brenna Kays’s research asks: (1) Are the products and burdens for restoration success equally distributed spatially and across socio-economic demographics? (2) What are the perceptions and beliefs of public stakeholders about restoration practices (like prescribed burning, stream restoration) in urban areas of Miami Dade county? (3) Are diverse stakeholder values being considered in restoration planning? And, (4) how can communication and education improve public support for these restoration practices?
As practitioners of environmental sciences, we have the unique opportunity to critically analyze and acknowledge the social dynamics at play in our research and practice in order to foster more equitable distribution of benefits and burdens for all who are affected by conservation and restoration work.
Equity Implications of Sea Level Rise in South Florida
Sea level rise is increasing extreme sea level events, including high-tide and storm-associated floods, which can drive migration and displacement of populations within coastal communities. With a population of 2.7 million people and an estimated $400 billion in total value of assets exposed to flooding , Miami-Dade County (MDC) is exceptionally vulnerable to sea level rise. Dr. Nadia Seeteram’s work, as a former PhD student and now courtesy postdoc, focused on understanding the equity implications of sea level rise on MDC, especially as it relates to migration and displacement. She developed a climate mobility framework that considers the multiplicities of sea level rise induced movement and then applied the framework to MDC by assessing how social and economic vulnerability and sea level rise risk interact. The goal of this framework was to present a method for assessing how social, economic, and cultural factors when combined with varying SLR risk and related hazards may result in distinct climate migration related pressures. Identifying typologies of potential migration outcomes may be helpful in examining potential racial and ethnic inequities as related to a suite of climate adaptation decisions, including affordable housing programs and climate resilience strategies. These local dynamics of climate adaptation policy will increasingly occur across coastal areas at risk of sea level rise, and therefore carry global relevance for addressing sea level rise adaptation.
Manatees in the Miami River
Led by graduate student Andrea Otalora, the Miami River Manatee Project aims to understand various facets of life for manatees in this river. First, we will establish manatee population numbers in the river, building off of existing census methods used in similar projects. Some overarching questions of this project are: What are current manatee and human interactions on the Miami River like? What is manatee behavior in the Miami River like? What is the river’s significance as manatee habitat? Our research will increase understanding of the role manatees play in this ecosystem, and what protections for them are needed.
Introduced peafowl in Coconut Grove
Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) are native to India, however there are extensive populations living and thriving today in Miami, Florida, especially in the Coconut Grove and Coral Gables areas. There is no documented research on how or when these birds were introduced, or their modern ecological and social impacts. Student-led, collaborative research aims to fill these gaps through a mixed methods approach. We aim to disentangle the history of the peafowl introduction in Coconut Grove, document human and social dimensions of peafowl presence today, and gather information on the population dynamics and ecological impacts of peafowl.
