Human activity is causing catastrophic damage to our ecosystems. Understanding the barriers to and opportunities for evidence-based communication is crucial to building resilience and climate justice while restoring our natural systems.

Communication fundamentally shapes how we view both human and environmental systems as well as their relationships to each other. We must better understand and document human responses and adaptations to climate change.

And we must also learn how communication impacts what people believe about the environment and how they behave.

Our Research

In partnership with colleagues from UO’s Environment Initiative and worldwide, SCR Associates pursue transdisciplinary research and creative inquiry to enhance our understanding of the interactions between human and environmental systems.

• The goal of one Oregon project is to improve communication practices around smoke and indoor air quality in the town of Oakridge. SCR Associate Director Dr. Hollie Smith and SCR Associate Dr. Autumn Shafer will work with Oakridge Air to understand the barriers people face when making sense of information during smoke events, best methods to encourage protective actions, and the organizations and communication methods that community members trust most.
• SCR Associates also explore merging traditional knowledge with modern science in the face of ongoing environmental change. Now available for viewing on PBS, three short films in the A Qayaq to Carry Us series by SCR associates Mark Blaine and Torsten Kjellstrand highlight the human ingenuity and adaptation to natural systems embodied within practices and technologies of traditional boat builders.
• With funding from SCR’s Small Grants Program, Emerging Scholar Stuart Stiedle-Nix (Geography) is extending visual communication research to wildfire.

Spotlight Project: ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System

SCR Associate Director Dr. Hollie Smith collaborates with other UO researchers and scientists around the West Coast on issues of natural hazards communication. One project she has been involved in is studying the rollout of the West Coast’s first early earthquake warning system, ShakeAlert. Dr. Smith has been part of a team that has written about ways to make earthquake early warning campaigns more equitable and inclusive. She is a member of the USGS Social Science Working Group.

 

SCR Associates Who Study Environmental Communication

Mark Blaine
Troy Elias
Max Foxman
Raleigh Goodwin
Peter Laufer
Kelli Matthews
David Markowitz
Debra Merskin
Deb Morrison
Kim Sheehan
Paul Slovic
Hollie Smith
Senyo Ofori-Parku
Ellen Peters