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All environmental problems are social problems, and so, studying them requires combining diverse types of data that represent relevant physical, ecological, and social factors. Combining these data allows one to ask if environmental patterns or processes influence social outcomes such as health, poverty, or political conflict. Social factors can also be drivers of environmental and social outcomes. For example, political conflict may lead to human migration and landscape degradation. In some cases, social and environmental data are both in quantitative forms, and thus, combining them in an analysis may use statistical techniques that many scholars are familiar with.
This short video provides such an example where diverse types of data—climatic, economic, educational, and household location—were combined to determine if climate variability, especially extreme events, has influenced educational attainment by Ethiopian children.
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About the Presenters
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Cynthia Wei
Associate Director of EducationDr. Cynthia Wei was the Associate Director of Education at SESYNC from 2016 to 2018 and previously the Assistant Director of Education and Outreach from 2012 to 2016. In this role, she led and managed educational programs including the SESYNC undergraduate research internship and the postdoctoral fellowship program (co-led), as well as initiatives to broaden participation with underrepresented minorities. She also created and taught an annual short course to advance the teaching of socio-environmental synthesis using the case study approach; this effort resulted in education-focused SESYNC...
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Heather Randell
Postdoctoral FellowDr. Heather Randell is a sociologist and demographer with interests in environmental change, sustainable development, and human health and well-being. Heather is currently an Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology and Demography at Penn State University, and prior to joining Penn State, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at SESYNC and the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland. Heather uses quantitative and qualitative methods to understand the health and social impacts of climate change, as well as the linkages between hydropower development...