Project title: Are all urban greenspaces created equal? Understanding how cities’ socioeconomic landscapes shape localized ecological structure and function.
Project description: Is it possible to distill multitudes of geographically, environmentally, and socioeconomically diverse cities into a single classification of “urban”? As we work towards assessing these landscape’s characteristics in an increasingly granular manner, what should be taken into consideration as the potential causal factors shaping urban ecological communities? More specifically, it’s essential to evaluate–especially in areas as functionally dominated by human activity as cities–which anthropogenic forces are defining the extreme yet fine-scale variation within broad land-use classifications. Given these considerations, the very utilization of “urban” as a characterizing term for the dynamic, fragmented, and disturbed habitats that symbiotically compose cities must be re-evaluated to capture necessary minutia critical to understanding the abiotic basis upon which urban ecological communities develop. A synthesis of the countless inextricably interwoven social, economic, environmental, legislative, and governmental networks that characterize many cities' pronounced socioeconomic stratification can provide context crucial to uncovering the mechanisms driving urban ecological phenomena. Employing a perspective as interdisciplinary as proposed above creates a window of opportunity to understand the countless novel biological trends that persist both within and across cities. Through my research, I seek to further exercise, expand, and develop this highly incorporative network-based approach to assessing both broader trends of temporal and geographic urbanization gradients, and small-scale variation that can dictate yet-to-be understood urban ecological unknowns. My hope is that the development of an explanatory framework centered on the explicitly anthropogenic forces collectively shaping ecosystems can serve as a direct pathway for urban ecological research implications to be clearly coupled with practical, actionable conservation outcomes. I aim to conduct case studies examining various ecological and evolutionary patterns across multiple cities whose diverse characteristics maximize between-urban variation. These differences will allow for the framework’s generalized applicability, as well as more specialized adaptability to capture unique characteristics of different urban areas, to be tested and further developed, and to ideally make clear potential ecologically significant players within each city’s web of interconnected networks.
Most important achievement: The development of a non-profit I co-founded with my family, Proud Art STL, has been my proudest achievement. It's not only been rewarding to continue to reach more queer teenagers in both a time and location where I know community is essential, but to also grow that much closer to my family through the process.
Reflections on the College Scholar Program: The College Scholar Program’s emphasis on an interdisciplinary synthesis of many fields has challenged me to engage with research with a more holistic and integrated mindset, a newfound consideration that I feel has resulted in significant personal and professional growth. Being able to pursue what I am most passionate about without feeling like I’m being torn in different directions towards different fields of study has meant a lot to me, and has truly re-ignited my passion for learning. I’m incredibly excited for all that this program has to offer moving forward, and thankful to the support the faculty has provided thus far.