Caren Cooper
Professor
she/her
Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence in Leadership in Public Science University Faculty Scholar
Forestry and Environmental Resources
Jordan Hall Addition 5219
Bio
Research Interests
My current projects use geospatial analytics to discern large-scale patterns across the natural and built environments to gain insights into the ecology, evolution and conservation of birds, as well as expose racial and economic inequities in environmental quality and in the representativeness of environmental data itself. I carry out social science research to develop public science programs that engage participants in collective efforts to generate large-scale data to study, visualize, and change the interactions between social and ecological systems, including the built environment. My other interests include the ecosystem services of trees and public understanding of urban forests, for mitigation of air, light and noise pollution, sensor technologies, flood risk and urban heat island effects. Topics of interest to me include:
- design of participatory sciences
- ecology of lightscapes and soundscapes
- norms of data ethics for citizen science
- avian incubation behavior and physiology
- water quality monitoring
- human-wildlife management
- eggs as bioindicators of contaminants
and any research question that can only be answered via the participatory sciences.
Publications
- A framework for contextualizing social-ecological biases in contributory science data , PEOPLE AND NATURE (2024)
- Diversifying Large-Scale Participatory Science: The Efficacy of Engagement through Facilitator Organizations , Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (2023)
- Equitable Data Governance Models for the Participatory Sciences , Community Science (2023)
- Facilitator organizations enhance learning and action through citizen science: a case study of Girl Scouts' Think Like a Citizen Scientist journey on SciStarter , ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION RESEARCH (2023)
- Mapping the Landscape of Citizen Science in Africa: Assessing its Potential Contributions to Sustainable Development Goals 6 and 11 on Access to Clean Water and Sanitation and Sustainable Cities , Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (2023)
- Using citizen science data to investigate annual survival rates of resident birds in relation to noise and light pollution , URBAN ECOSYSTEMS (2023)
- Citizen Science as an Ecosystem of Engagement: Implications for Learning and Broadening Participation , BioScience (2022)
- Citizen Science in Postsecondary Education: Current Practices and Knowledge Gaps , BIOSCIENCE (2022)
- Taking the Pulse of the Planet , (2022)
- Testing the Waters: Locally, Regionally, Globally , (2022)