Clare Sullivan Email and Phone Number

I contribute to strategic planning for interdisciplinary research center addressing interactions between agriculture, environment and livelihoods. I lead soil research and implementation for Vital Signs Africa, an environmental monitoring system with open protocols, data, data analysis and visualization, funded by a 10 million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This system is designed to inform agricultural decision-making and policy, and monitor outcomes using integrated measurements of agriculture, ecosystem services and human wellbeing. My research focus includes sustainable intensification, agrobiodiversity and land management decisions by farmers.

I coordinated socioeconomic and biophysical research, including field data collection, satellite image acquisitions, data analysis, capacity building of field teams and coordination with local actors, organizations and relevant government agencies for ten field sites in SubSaharan Africa. My responsibilities included proposal-writing, grant reporting, management of data systems, development of survey tools, e-forms, and field protocols, data cleaning and analysis of landscape-level environmental change, with an emphasis on soils and trees.

I produced a guidance document on best methods for assessing environmental needs in post-crisis and post-disaster contexts, including developing tools for spatial data analysis and to value ecosystem services. I validated methods during field visit to a watershed in Haiti affected by the 2008 hurricane season and created a set of vulnerability maps linking social and environmental spatial data sets.

U4737.001 Economics of the Environment

I led groups of high school students and other crew leaders on working on trail building and landscape restoration projects on public lands. My posts were in Isle Royale National Park (NP), Sleeping Bear Dunes NP, Olympic NP, Pecos National Historic Park, and Bear Mountain State Park. My projects included restoration, trail maintenance, stone retention wall and staircase construction. I coordinated budget, logistics, and the projects themselves for backcountry assignments with the goal of promoting leadership, community involvement, environmental stewardship and educational outreach. I served as the liaison between SCA and various park and not-for-profit organizations working within the parks.

I facilitated workshops in Spanish with potato farmers in Cajamarca, Peru to collect data and map the support and information networks that farmers utilize. I wrote a report in Spanish and English on these networks and an evaluation of the use of participatory methods, including Farmer Field Schools, in agricultural extension as initial stage of 2 million dollar IFAD grant.