Community & Environmental Design Research
Dr. Thompson’s scholarly activities focus on advances in landscape planning that use applied social-ecological science to achieve better decision-making at the interface of land use planning and natural resource management.
Goal: Applying a human dimensions science approach to community and environmental design research.
ISSUE: The negative impacts of human-driven changes on the landscape are evident in many ways, from the degraded condition of our waterways to the loss of green infrastructure that assists in controlling flooding and producing food. Despite rising awareness of these challenges, the failures of past expert-driven approaches to landscape management have in many ways made community decision-making to address these challenges more difficult. To address these failures, we must begin to understand the human dimensions of community and environmental problems to measure and leverage our understanding of attitudes, beliefs, and barriers that influence behavior change. As an expert in the human dimensions of natural resources, Dr. Thompson believes that landscape planning efforts must collaborate to combine multiple disciplinary perspectives to understand ecological and physical landscape conditions. Primary in this inquiry are efforts to identify the individual, group, and community social factors that will shape landscape change. Currently, Dr. Thompson has received funding support to use this approach in the following ways:
• Design applications in agricultural landscapes: Dr. Thompson seeks to understand how we can leverage design and planning methods to enhance production, recreation, and conservation benefits that are the building blocks of multifunctional agricultural landscapes. Partnering with the U.S. Forest Service, Dr. Thompson has obtained contract funding to develop a design approach leveraging a USFS GIS toolset titled AgBuffer-Builder that supports conservation land management decision-making on farmland. In addition, he is actively participating in social science research collaborations that include writing a successful USDA NIFA proposal to renew a Hatch Act Multistate Regional Partnership. Recently, Dr. Thompson notified that the USDA NIFA will be providing $10,000,000 in funding to support “#MoreThanCorn: Enhancing rural resilience through landscape diversity in the Midwest.” As a co-PI, he will provide community visioning, visualization, and design support to this regional initiative seeking to explore the resilient intensification of the agricultural landscape.
- Lake & Watershed: GreenLake_CommunitySurveyReport-12222021
• Coastal erosion management on Lake Michigan shorelines: Working with an interdisciplinary team exploring in-lake sediment transport and searching for beach erosion intervention alternatives. Dr. Thompson leads the social science team to develop shoreline landowner surveys to identify critical issues and evaluate the likelihood of acceptance of proposed practices.
- Shoreline Erosion: CCED_LakeMichiganLandownerSurvey_Report-V1
• Urban agriculture: Partnering with Purdue HLA faculty specializing in urban agriculture, Dr. Thompson is guiding surveys intended to evaluate how urban farmers obtain information and select best practices for managing soil health and pollution.