Research Program

I am an interdisciplinary social-environmental scientist studying how human communities are impacted by environmental change. My work investigates the sociocultural dimensions of climate and land use change, Indigenous environmental justice, and rural social inequality. My research program currently includes four active research areas, with a focus on communities and landscapes across North America, from the local level to a continental scale.

Active Projects

(1) Masonic Mountain Shared Stewardship Project: Social Dimensions and Institutional Effectiveness of Collaborative Stewardship with Native Nations of a Forest Agroecosystem in California (2022-ongoing)

Project Description: Pinyon-juniper woodlands are currently facing numerous threats and there is an urgent need to determine effective approaches for enhancing woodland resilience and cultural values amidst environmental change. Pinyon-juniper ecosystems are central to the worldviews, social identities, and cultural practices of many Indigenous peoples, including the Numu (Northern Paiute) and Wašiw (Washoe) peoples of California’s eastern Sierra Nevada. Increasingly frequent hot droughts associated with climate change have caused widespread tree mortality across the US Southwest. Warming temperatures are also linked to decreasing pine nut production, with consequent effects on cultural uses, Indigenous traditional foods, wildlife habitat, and tree reproduction. The interaction between extreme fire weather conditions and the invasion of non-native species has led to increased frequency of catastrophically large, high-severity wildfires in the region. An additional concern among Native nations in the area is the long-term emphasis by land managers in the region on tree removals that seek to convert woodlands to shrublands. This planning collaborative is part of a multi-year effort to develop strategies to improve forest resilience and revitalize Indigenous cultural practices on large forest landscapes in Mono County, California in collaboration with Tribal nations, forest ecologists, and federal land managers. The social-ecological studies associated with this effort will evaluate the impact of different techniques for improving woodland resilience as well as evaluate the effectiveness and sociocultural dimensions of collaborative stewardship with Tribal nations when working across cultural and institutional boundaries.

Policy Relevance: Achieving a land stewardship strategy that integrates ecological and cultural values offers the possibility of more inclusive shared stewardship of public lands between Tribal nations and the US government. In addition to experimentally testing various approaches to improving forest resilience, there is a need to better understand the challenges and possibilities of inclusive environmental governance that engages with Native communities and Tribal Nations on a deeper level. Current land management policies and decision-making frameworks seldom include Indigenous knowledge, and yet Indigenous peoples are often adversely affected by federal management on their ancestral homelands. This project investigates new models of effective shared stewardship amidst ongoing environmental changes that are altering ecological processes and upending culturally important ecosystems. This project is poised to inform more effective public lands and environment policy that advances the sovereignty and well-being of Native nations across the United States.

Collaborators: Alexandra Urza (PI) - US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, Bridgeport Indian Colony, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, University of California-Berkeley, University of Nevada-Reno, Great Basin Bird Observatory, Stanford University.

Funders: State of California - Sierra Nevada Conservancy, USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture

Publications: In progress

(2) Pinyon Community Climate Action Project: Improving the Social-Ecological Resilience of California Dryland Forest Ecosystems to Climate Change (2023-ongoing)

Project Description: This project focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of forest resilience for Tribal Nations and rural communities. Recent droughts and wildfires have resulted in extensive tree die-off of dryland forests across eastern and southern California, with tree regeneration often insufficient for replacement. Pinyon pine trees and the edible pine nuts they produce are critical for wildlife, forest sustainability, and carbon sequestration and are culturally and economically important to Tribal Nations and rural communities. Communities have observed reduced pine nut production in association with increases in aridity, even in areas that have not experienced recent tree mortality. These dramatic reductions threaten Tribal members’ and other pine nut harvesters’ cultural practices and livelihoods, and adversely affect wildlife habitat and landscapes that support outdoor recreation economies. Managing for more resilient pinyon-juniper woodlands has thus become an increasingly important priority. Our interdisciplinary team is working together to: (1) understand how Tribal Nations and rural communities in or adjacent to woodlands value and use these ecosystems for food, fuelwood, silvopasture, recreation, and other cultural and economic uses; (2) establish a citizen science monitoring plan and network across California’s eastern Sierra Nevada to monitor woodland health and pine nut production; (3) elevate Tribal and community goals for improving climate resilience through public outreach, publications and reports, and a regional conference; and (4) assess how climate and stand structure collectively influence pinyon pine seed production and identify the genetic basis for variation in seed production to select trees that will advance reforestation and support a climate resilient economy.

Evaluation of community uses and values related to forests will be accomplished through household surveys, community focus groups, and stakeholder interviews in Mono and Inyo counties. This will be conducted to understand how forest adjacent communities value and use dryland forest resources for cultural, economic, and subsistence purposes to inform prioritization of management objectives. As a community-based participatory research initiative, we are committed to promoting effective and inclusive community partnerships through community-based participatory research design, shared project governance, and development of a Tribal data sovereignty agreement to protect sensitive knowledge and ensure equity in the benefits of research.

Policy Relevance: Through these efforts this project will produce multiple actionable outcomes that include expanded Tribal forest stewardship on federal lands, a community-informed management prioritization framework, strategies to increase pinyon pine nut production in intact pinyon pine forests and planned resilience gardens, climate-adaptive reforestation recommendations, a monitoring network to identify priority management areas and provide current, forecasted data on pinyon pine nut production, and interdisciplinary training in field-based ecological research and participatory action research for Tribal partners, students, and postdocs to engage in a multi-faceted approach to conservation and provide the skill sets required for climate science and adaptation-related careers. For more information, please see: http://pinyonjuniper.org/.

Collaborators: Miranda Redmond (PI) - UC Berkeley, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi (co-PI) - Stanford University, Bishop Paiute Tribe, Big Pine Paiute Tribe, US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, Inyo National Forest, Sierra Business Council, Eastern Sierra Land Trust, Friends of the Inyo.

Funders: University of California Office of the President, Climate Action Research Initiative

Publications: In progress

(3) Cultural Dynamics of Climate and Land Use Change in California and Nevada (2016-ongoing)

Project Description: My current book manuscript examines the social and cultural dimensions of environmental change in the rural North American West. Based on thirty-six months of field-based ethnographic and historical research in the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada regions of California and Nevada, it investigates the cultural politics of land and its stewardship in dryland forest and shrub steppe ecosystems as it intersects with a changing climate, land-use histories, and environmental governance regimes. Landscapes are undergoing material transformation due to climate change, land-use practices, and settler colonialism, in turn reshaping how people relate to land, substantiate their place on it, and make claims to territory. This is creating new socioecological configurations of people, land, and place I call ecologies of belonging.

The cultural and political dynamics that shape the construction and maintenance of the boundaries of belonging and non-belonging in these assemblages are explored through a series of interconnected chapters that show how Paiute people, federal land managers, and livestock ranchers navigate environmental changes and understand their changing relationship to the land through the work of constructing place and belonging for themselves and others. I elucidate these processes through four ethnographic case studies explaining major sociocultural dynamics of rapidly shifting landscapes: (1) moral ecologies reflected in conflicting modes of landscape valuation and moral claims-making that play out in stewardship encounters over the proper maintenance of relationships between people, plants, and animals; (2) sage grouse conservation as a project of cultivated belonging that seeks to reshape how species are perceived in relation to the land through their iconicity as an indicator of healthy ecosystems; (3) aesthetic representations of desert landscapes I call the settler pastoral that sustain an agrarian vision for productive rural lands tied to the production of food and reproduction of culture through livestock ranching that is challenged for its erasures by Great Basin Indigenous artists and land rights advocates through the visualization of extraction; and (4) heritage politics evident in contested regimes for managing cultural heritage on public lands that structure relationships between Native Nations and federal land mangers over material culture and Indigenous claims to land and belonging. A series of intercalary chapters provide natural history profiles for four important nonhuman figures in this study: pinyon pine, sage hen, cheatgrass, and cattle. These sections collectively describe the life history and place of these plants and animals on the land and the role they play as actors shaping landscapes.

By unraveling the uneven effects of environment change for Indigenous nations, natural resource managers, livestock ranchers, and rural communities—all of whom are affected by large-scale wildfires, the threat of species extirpation, evolving land use practices, and novel ecosystems—this dissertation breaks new ground to show the contingent and quotidian practices of land stewardship that reshape the landscape of place and belonging in the Great Basin. The book manuscript shows how the social identities and cultural practices of Paiute people are destabilized by the loss of traditional foods and access to forestlands for cultural practices due to large-scale wildfires; drought-induced plant mortality; ecological restoration projects; and land-use impacts from livestock grazing, outdoor recreation, and mining development. It describes how livestock ranchers are gradually being displaced on the land as their operations are upended by changing societal values and governance regimes affecting land use that are making cattle increasingly out of place on Great Basin uplands even as protections for valley agricultural lands are being expanded to sustain ranching and maintain undeveloped open space. Land managers struggle with the multiplying burdens of environmental change, contending with limited staffing and highly bureaucratic processes that make adaptation to changing circumstances difficult in light of existing paradigms of environmental values and knowledge about what constitutes natural variation in ecosystems in unprecedented times.

This project offers insight into how land stewardship and public lands policy affect Indigenous nations and rural communities facing rapid socioecological change in the rural US West. It links material changes in the landscape to historical land management practices and shifting experiences of place that are affecting the land-based practices and cultural attachments that natural resource-dependent communities maintain with rural lands. The institutional barriers to Indigenous stewardship on public lands limit important cultural practices that sustain the lifeways and livelihoods of Indigenous peoples, but new models are demonstrating promise in increasing collaboration and community-led stewardship. This work highlights the contestation of settler colonial land regimes by Paiute people and the vision of local communities for livable, hospitable landscapes that support multiple forms of life and belonging in the Anthropocene.

Policy Relevance: There is an urgent need to better understand how new social-ecological configurations of diverse human, plant and animal communities shape each other. This work informs efforts to help rural communities navigating environmental change in the Anthropocene on socially and ecologically vulnerable rural landscapes in the US West through engagement with federal land managers, Tribal nations, and county/state government agencies.

Collaborators: Bridgeport Indian Colony, USDA Forest Service

Funders: Yale University, USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture, Wenner-Gren Foundation, University of California

Publications:

Burow, P.B. 2023. The Ecology of Belonging: Cultural Dynamics of Environmental Change in the North American West. Ph.D. Dissertation. New Haven, CT: Yale University. 456 pp.

Burow, P.B. 2021. “Burning Through History in California's 'Asbestos' Forests” Hot Spots: Fieldsights. Society for Cultural Anthropology. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/burning-through-history-in-californias-asbestos-forests

Burow, P.B. 2020. “Nature’s Belonging: Landscape, Conservation, and the Cultural Politics of Place in the Great Basin.” In Public Lands in the Western US: Place and Politics in the Clash between Public and Private, K. Sullivan and J. McDonald, eds. pp. 175-197. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793637079/Public-Lands-in-the-Western-US-Place-and-Politics-in-the-Clash-between-Public-and-Private

(4) Indigenous Data Empowerment Network: Social-Ecological Effects of Land Dispossession and Forced Migration on Indigenous Peoples in North America (2015-ongoing)

Project Description: We constructed a new comprehensive dataset of land dispossession and forced migration for Indigenous peoples and nations across the area currently called the contiguous United States. We employ a comparative-historical research design with two time periods, historical lands and present-day lands, to assess the full extent and long-term effects of land dispossession and forced migration for Indigenous peoples in North America. Our analysis examines climate change risks and hazards, economic endowments, agricultural suitability, and proximity to U.S. federally-managed lands for Native Nations dispossessed of their lands and forcibly relocated under settler colonization.

Policy Relevance: This work informs climate adaptation and mitigation for Indigenous nations and furthers understanding of the factors affecting landscape resilience tied to historical land dispossession and forced migration. This initiative represents a new macro-level attempt to provide such information at a large-scale, and serves as a basis not only for ongoing efforts to mitigate future impacts of climate change, but for new policies to remediate the historical causes responsible for generating vulnerability across Native America. For more information, please see: http://nativelandresearch.org/

Collaborators: Kyle Whyte, Justin Farrell, Kathryn McConnell, Jude Bayham; Native Land Information System

Funders: Yale University, National Science Foundation, USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture

Publications:

Farrell, J., P.B. Burow, K. McConnell, J. Bayham, K.P. Whyte, and G. Koss. 2021. “Effects of Land Dispossession and Forced Migration on Indigenous Peoples in North America.” Science 374(6567): eabe4943. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe4943

Completed Projects

(5) Covid Rural West Project: Community and Household-Level Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic in the Rural US West (2020-2022)

Project Description: The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted life for millions of people across the United States. Yet, there has been a lack of rapid and reliable information about the scope of its impact and potential solutions in underserved areas such as the rural U.S. West. Current information relies on national surveys or focuses on urban regions with greater institutional resources, rather than tailored specifically to the unique needs of rural communities. With this project we fielded a multi-wave survey to assess the social and economic impacts of the pandemic on households and communities across the western United States.

Policy Relevance: This project is informing public policy across various levels of government to meet the needs of rural communities struggling with the social and economic impacts of the pandemic. For more information on the survey and its policy recommendations, please see: https://www.covidruralwest.org/

Collaborators: Justin Farrell, Kathryn McConnell, J. Tom Mueller, Alexis Merdjanoff

Funders: National Science Foundation

Publications:

McConnell, K., J.T. Mueller, A.A. Merdjanoff, P.B. Burow, and J. Farrell. 2023. “Informal modes of social support among residents of the rural American West during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Rural Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12507

Mueller, J.T., A.A. Merdjanoff, K. McConnell, P.B. Burow, and J. Farrell. 2021. “Elevated serious psychological distress, economic disruption, and the COVID-19 pandemic in the nonmetropolitan American West.” Preventive Medicine: e106919. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2021.106919

Mueller, J.T., K. McConnell, P.B. Burow, K. Pofahl, A.A. Merdjanoff, and J. Farrell. 2021. “Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Rural America” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(1): 2019378118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2019378118

Farrell, J., J.T. Mueller, K. McConnell, P.B. Burow, K. Pofahl, and A.A. Merdjanoff. 2020. Impact of COVID-19 on the Rural West: Material Needs, Economic Recovery, and Political Attitudes. Executive Summary of Research Findings. New Haven, CT: Yale School of the Environment. https://doi.org/10079/08e2da0a-551b-46a6-a1a2-ad98816a7870

Burow, P.B., K. McConnell, J.T. Mueller, and J. Farrell. Under review. “Political Support for a Green Recovery from the Covid-19 Pandemic in Rural America.” Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/dzeuv