Kirsten Schwarz

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Kirsten Schwarz is an urban ecologist working at the interface of environment, equity, and health. Her research focuses on environmental hazards and amenities in cities and how their distribution impacts minoritized communities. Her work on lead contaminated soils documents how biogeophysical and social variables relate to the spatial patterning of soil lead. Her research on urban tree canopy has revealed large scale patterns related to income and tree canopy as well as historical legacies that impact this relationship. Most recently, Dr. Schwarz led an interdisciplinary team working on a community-engaged green infrastructure design that integrated participatory design and place-based solutions to realizing desired ecosystem services.

Her expertise in science communication and engaging communities in the co-production of science was recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) naming her a Fellow in the Leshner Leadership Institute in the Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology. Dr. Schwarz’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, AAAS, and the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Dr. Schwarz has a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Rutgers University. Prior to joining UCLA, she was an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Northern Kentucky University where she directed their Ecological Stewardship Institute.

Selected Publications:

Schwarz, K., A. Berland, and D.L. Herrmann. 2018. Green, but not just: Rethinking environmental justice outcomes in shrinking cities. Sustainable Cities and Society 41:816-821.

Ossola, A., L.A. Schifman, D.L. Herrmann, A.S. Garmestani, K. Schwarz, and M.E. Hopton. 2018. The provision of urban ecosystem services throughout the private-social-public domain: a conceptual framework. Cities and the Environment 11(1): Article 5.

Herrmann, D.L., W-C Chuang, K. Schwarz, T.M. Bowles, A.S. Garmestani, W.D. Shuster, T. Eason, M.E. Hopton, C.R. Allen. 2018. Agroecology for the shrinking city. Sustainability 10(3):675.

Cutts, B.B., J.K. London, S. Meiners, K. Schwarz, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2017. Moving dirt: Soil, lead and the unstable politics of urban gardening. Local Environment 22(8):998-1018.

London, J.K., K. Schwarz, M.L. Cadenasso, B.B. Cutts, C. Mason, J. Lim, K. Valenzuela-Garcia and H. Smith. 2017. Weaving community-university research and action partnerships for environmental justice. Action Research 16(2):173-189.

Schwarz, K., R.V. Pouyat, and I. Yesilonis. 2016. Legacies of lead in charm city’s soil: Lessons from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13(2):209.

Herrmann, D.L., K. Schwarz, W.D. Shuster, A. Berland, B.C. Chaffin, A.S. Garmestani, and M.E. Hopton. 2016. Ecology for the shrinking city. BioScience 66(11):965-973.

Schwarz, K., B.B. Cutts, J.K. London, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2016. Growing gardens in shrinking cities: A solution to the soil lead problem? Sustainability 8(2):141.

Cutts, B.B., D. Fang, K. Hornik, J.K. London, K. Schwarz and M.L. Cadenasso. 2016. Media frames and shifting places of environmental (in)justice: a qualitative historical geographic information system method. Environmental Justice 9(1):23-28.

Berland, A., K. Schwarz, D. L. Herrmann, M.E. Hopton. 2015. How environmental justice patterns are shaped by place: terrain and tree canopy in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Cities and the Environment 8(1):Article 1.

Schwarz, K., M. Fragkias, C.G. Boone, W. Zhou, M. McHale, J.M. Grove, J. O’Neil-Dunne, J.P. McFadden, G.L. Buckley, D. Childers, L. Ogden, S. Pincetl, D. Pataki, A. Whitmer, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2015. Trees grow on money: urban tree canopy cover and environmental justice. PLoS ONE 10(4).

Zhou, W., M.L. Cadenasso, K. Schwarz, and S.T.A. Pickett. 2014. Quantifying spatial heterogeneity in urban landscapes: integrating visual interpretation and object-based classification. Remote Sensing 6(4):3369-3386.

Schwarz, K., K.C. Weathers, S.T.A. Pickett, R.G. Lathrop, R.V. Pouyat, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2013. A comparison of three empirically based, spatially explicit predictive models of residential soil Pb concentrations in Baltimore, Maryland USA: understanding the variability within cities. Environmental Geochemistry and Health 35(4):495-510.

Schwarz, K., S.T.A. Pickett, R.G. Lathrop, K.C. Weathers, R.V. Pouyat, and M.L. Cadenasso.  2012. The effects of the urban built environment on the spatial distribution of lead in residential soils. Environmental Pollution 163:32-39.

Osmond, D.L., N.M. Nadkarni, C.T. Driscoll, E. Andrews, A.J. Gold, S.R. Broussard Allred, A.R. Berkowitz, M.W. Klemens, T.L. Loecke, M.A. McGarry, K. Schwarz, M.L. Washington and P.M. Groffman. 2010. The role of interface organizations in science communication and understanding. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 8(6):306-313.

Boone, C.G., M.L. Cadenasso, J.M. Grove, K. Schwarz, and G.L. Buckley. 2010. Landscape, vegetation characteristics, and group identity in an urban and suburban watershed: why the 60s matter. Urban Ecosystems 13(3):255-271.

Zhou, W., K. Schwarz, and M.L. Cadenasso. 2010. Mapping urban landscape heterogeneity: agreement between visual interpretation and digital classification approaches. Landscape Ecology 25(1):53-67.

Cadenasso, M.L., S.T.A. Pickett, and K. Schwarz. 2007. Spatial heterogeneity in urban ecosystems: reconceptualizing land cover and a framework for classification. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5(2):80-88.

Grove, J.M., M.L. Cadenasso, W.R. Burch, Jr., S.T.A. Pickett, K.Schwarz, J. O’Neil-Dunne, M. Wilson, A. Troy, and C.Boone. 2006. Data and methods comparing social structure and vegetation structure of urban neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland. Society and Natural Resources 19:117-136.

V. Kelly Turner

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Kelly Turner (she/her) is an associate professor of urban planning and geography and serves as associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI). She leads LCI’s research on heat which provides evidence-based approaches to protect people where they live, work and play.

Dr. Turner’s current research encompasses heat governance and policy, planning for heat resilient communities, and producing actionable data for heat preparedness. She directs the Center for Heat Resilient Communities, a National Integrated Heat Health Information Systems Center for excellence. Her work has been published in Nature, Environmental Research Letters, and the Journal of the American Planning Association and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, National Science Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has served as a panelist for the National Academy of Sciences and as a Science Advisor to the Arsht-Rockefeller Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance. She regularly appears on television, radio, and print media including CNN, NPR, and NBC.

She received a doctoral degree in geography from the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Wellesley College.

Recent Publications

Derakshan, S., Dialesandro, J., Turner, V.K., and Longcore, T. 2025. Space-time dynamics in hazard exposure analysis: smartphone locations show pedestrian routes are inflexible to extreme heat events. NPJ Natural Hazards: https://rdcu.be/d5Rst

Matthews, T., Ramsay, E., Saeed, F., Sherwood, S., Jay, O., Raymond, C., Abram, N., Kai Wei Lee, J., Barley, S., Kirkpatric, SP., Khan, MS., Meissner, K., Roberts, C., Mavalankar, D., Smith, KGC., Ullah, A., Sadad, A., Turner, V.K., Forrest, A. 2024. Humid heat exceeds human tolerance and causes mass mortality, Nature Climate Change, 15:4-6. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02215-8

Sullivan, A., White, D., and Turner, V.K. 2024. Framing uncertainty in water-policy discourse: Insights from Arizona’s Project ADD Water. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13412-023-00868-z

Turner, V.K., Middel, A., and Vanos, J. 2023. Shade is an essential solution to hotter cities. Nature, 619, 694-697. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02311-3

Engel, RA., Millard-Ball, A., and Turner, V.K. 2022. Contributions of Roads to Surface Temperature: Evidence from Southern California. Environmental Research Communications, 5: 015004 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/acabb8/meta

Turner, V.K., *French, E., Dialessandro, J., Hondula, D., Middel, A., BanWeiss, G., and *Abdelatty, H. How are Cities Planning for Heat? Analysis of United States municipal plans. 2022. Environmental Research Letters, 17: 064054 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac73a9

Turner, V.K., *Gmoser-Daskalakis, K., Costello, D., Jefferson, A., and Bhaskar, A. 2022. Champions and Traditional Technocrats: The Role of Environmental Value Orientation in Stormwater Management. in Journal of the American Water Resources Association special issue on Connecting Land and Water for Healthy Communities. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1752-1688.13015

Turner, V.K. 2022. The environmental consequences of residential land tenure in single family neighborhoods. Land Use Policy, 114:105959. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837721006827

Turner, V.K., Rogers, M.*, Yujia, Z., Middel, A., Schneider, F.*, Ocón, J., Seeley, M.* Dialesandro, J. 2022. More Than Surface Temperature: Mitigating Thermal Exposure in Hyper-Local Land Systems. Journal of Land Use Science, 1:79-99. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1747423X.2021.2015003

Keith, L., Meerow, S., Hondula, DM., Turner, V.K., and Arnott, J. 2021. Deploy heat officers, policies and metrics. Nature, 598:29-31. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02677-2

Wang, C., Turner, V.K., Wentz, E.A., Myint, S.W. 2020. Optimization of Residential Green Spaces for Water Conservation and Heat Mitigation: A Case of Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Arizona. Science of the Total Environment, 763:144605.

Middel, A., Turner, V.K., Schneider, F.A.*, Zhang, Y., and Stiller, M.* 2020. Solar reflective pavements – A policy panacea to heat mitigation? Environmental Research Letters, 15: 064016.

Turner, V.K. and Stiller, M.* 2020. How do Homeowners Associations Regulate Residential Landscapes? An Analysis of Rule Structure and Content in Maricopa County, Arizona. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(1):25-38.

 

Ana Maria Duran Calisto

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Ana Maria Duran Calisto is an Ecuadorean architect, urbanist and environmental planner. She co-founded the design firm Estudio A0 in 2002 with her partner Jaskran (Jazz) Singh Kalirai in Quito, Ecuador, after receiving a Master of Architecture from PennDesign at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Liberal Arts Bachelor´s degree from Universidad San Francisco de Quito. The main pursuit of Estudio A0 is to develop environmentally responsible design and construction systems at all scales, by focusing on the possibilities of recycling, in situ clean energy production, water harvesting and reuse, high and low-tech hybrids, the investigation of local materials, and the reactivation of local ecologies. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Urban Planning at UCLA, under the advice of Professor Susanna Hecht. The focus of her research is the history of urbanization in the Amazon River basin.

Website: www.estudioa0.com
Contact: 424-361-8785