Research

Working in Transitioning Societies

Communities within low- and -middle income countries (LMICs) are and have experienced negative impacts from human-environmental systems through toxic site exposure, climate changes, and mismanaged (or lack thereof) environmental policies. The negative impacts of human-environmental systems on social, economic, environmental and culture in Eurasia creates new challenges for interdisciplinary and geospatial research agendas. The recent and ongoing impacts from human-environmental systems in Eurasia and in the Caucasus (rural and urban) display a complexity of data paucity, social, cultural, environmental, and political challenges. My research examines these complex dynamics from a geographic lens that is spatial and empirical.

Research Interests for Collaboration: Application and implementation of Climate Changes, Human-Environmental systems research, Data Scarcity in low- and -middle income countries (LMICs), Behavioral patterns and migration to natural and technological hazards, Risk Governance, Environmental & Social Vulnerability, Resilience, Adaptation, GIS, Cartography, Remote Sensing, Environmental Health Policies, Public Health, Human Rights Law, Environmental Law, and Demographic methods and theories when researching migration, environment, land cover changes, policies, gender, health, and land-use management policies and practices.

Specialties & Expertise: Climate Change, Human-Environmental Systems, Spatial Modeling, Pollution Management, Soil Science, Agricultural Development, Migration, Climate, and Hydrologic Sciences; GIS, Remote Sensing, Cartographic sciences; Population, Religious, Cultural, and Linguistic aspects of the Caucasus, Central Asia, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East.

Dissertation Research (published here): Chelsea Lissette focused on the human-environmental dimensions of environmental and technological hazards in urban and rural areas of the Eurasian nations, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. The methods she employed involved geospatial modeling of decision-making processes while applying cultural factors, social vulnerability, as well as environmental policies with remote sensed imagery and the Azerbaijan's Toxic Site Identification Program (TSIP) dataset.

Other Research Focused Projects: Chelsea Lissette's research is centered on the relationship of the environmental-human health risks concerning: data scarcity of demographic and environmental data within low to middle income nations, environmental and human health, climate-migration-conflict nexus, predicting ethnic conflict, right to clean environment, environmental management, ethnic communities in Eurasia, climate, migration, and conflict, which is rooted within interdisciplinary research and requires close engagement with the GISciences, Population Studies, as well as Regional and Cultural Studies when approaching complex environmental and humanitarian issues situated in the Caucasus (Azerbaijan) and Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan).