"Real world issue: Post-disaster, rural areas face a predictable pattern of resource flush, drawdown, and abandonment. In small towns and diverse communities, positive social, economic, and environmental impacts from these investments are often short-lived. A consequence is that scientifically-informed strategies designed to defend and harden economically valued coastal areas may have the unintended consequences of coercing buyouts, forcing relocation, and limiting environmental protections for vulnerable upstream communities, potentially to the detriment of the coastal fisheries and tourism opportunities being defended in the first place. In contrast to emergency-focused disaster work, watershed-based environmental planning is intended to be slower, strategic, and more adept at identifying and addressing chronic threats to and opportunities for environmental improvement and protection. Therefore, it stands to reason that integration between watershed governance and disaster recovery might provide a unique opportunity to create a network able to identify and focus energy on advocacy for change that connects people and sustains attention on the harms of maladaptive policies. Plan for proposed work: This study aims to identify opportunities to transform watershed governance to overcome chronic environmental justice challenges and their capacity to erode resilience following disasters. In addition to providing needed theoretical and methodological advances in social network analytics, this study could lead to better understanding of the links policy and advocacy link between ����������������just��������������� watershed governance and disaster resilience. The central research question is: Which properties of watershed governance enable (or constrain) environmental justice in disaster-prone coastal communities and to what extent do they resist predatory influences as the coronavirus pandemic unfolds? If, as we hypothesize, the three objectives are interrelated, then a JustWater framework will reveal connections between disaster and watershed governance policy arenas. To establish that coastal water injustice is, in fact, a problem of governance, we will investigate the well-documented watershed governance initiatives and environmental justice struggles in the Lumbee River Basin. We will pursue the following objectives: (1) Quantify impacts of disaster on formal and informal watershed governance systems using social network analytics. (2) Integrate analysis of political power and inequality with perceptions of governance outcomes by combining network analytics with interviews. (3) Analyze factors that change the values and beliefs embedded in policy proposals and governance procedures. Rationale for public support: This work will produce policy-relevant knowledge that will benefit the disaster and environmental management in the Lumbee River basin and create a transferrable protocol for evaluating potential synergies between disaster and watershed management coalitions. Results and protocols from data scraping initiatives, questionnaires, focus groups, and workshops will evaluate the process and outcomes of collaboration through a justice-centered lens. Outcomes and realistic impacts: The research results will be the just water governance aims of the Carolina coastlines. Secondary beneficiaries include the NC Disaster Management team, NC Inclusive Disaster Network, and Robeson County Cooperative for Sustainable Development and local municipalities participating in a community-university research/action partnership established in 2016. The partnership has a robust record of training students (UNC-Pembroke, NCSU) and community members in data collection, analysis, and dissemination. "

Despite many benefits of urban greening, tree-planting programs in diverse communities nationwide often face strong local resistance, especially on private lands. This resistance impacts the success of initiatives such as Green Heart, an urban greening effort in Louisville, KY, designed to create healthier neighborhoods by encouraging tree planting to mitigate air pollution. Working with leaders of Green Heart, our project will investigate various factors (social and/or environmental) that influence the success of greening interventions and identify environmentally just practices to promote healthy urban communities across the US. Using Louisville as a case study, with lessons learned from other cities, we aim to: (1) Synthesize current state of knowledge regarding public support for urban greening across diverse communities; (2) Identify factors associated with tree-planting program success; (3) Examine public perceptions of relationships between urban trees, health, and neighborhood change; and (4) Define and share best practices to promote a national community of practice focused on equitable and inclusive urban greening. Our efforts will culminate in a ����������������best practice��������������� guide and toolkit, shared with a growing national community of practice promoting social equity in urban forestry. Ultimately, the project will identify strategies to promote urban greening with communities, not just within communities.����������������

This project will identify how energy poverty identification is affected by changing spatial scales of analysis in North Carolina. Research outcomes from this will research provide context for the identification of energy poverty in North Carolina. Specifically, they will provide context for community and government decision-makers to understand the impacts of spatial analysis. This work will be done in 2 parts. The first part be a multi-scalar spatial model that compares components of energy poverty indicators between four geographic scales to understand how these changes alter what main energy indicators present at these levels. The second part will combine actual energy use data and with indicators to characterize how the detection of energy poverty changes by the scale of analysis.