program mixes anthropocentric and biophysical-oriented streams of scholarship and practice. Key to our approach is building novel data sets to better understand the range of recreational assets across a given rural ecosystem and their accessibility to diverse populations. Broadly, this project explores how the interrelations between the built and natural environments and social contexts impact population health.
One of the goals of this research program is to quantify how the varieties of localized physical activity cultures interact with population dynamics and economic forces to impact population well-being and health-related behaviors such as substance use and alcohol consumption, physical activity/inactivity, diet, and community engagement.
In a related dimension of this initiative, I have a teaching component that gives me a chance to take students on the road to consider the conservation side of our vast federal land holdings in the Mountain West. We leverage the great ISU Conservation Camp in western Montana as a base of operations to take a closer look at natural resource-rich recreation areas, rural communities, and the human-nature interface in a unique mountain context. I also teach a project-based rural communities course that takes students for a deep dive into the varieties of communities scattered across the rural ecology.