OUTREACH
Call of the Wild:
A Socio-Ecological Approach to Human Habitats Diane Pataki’s Landscape Lab creates a living experiment in which everyone becomes an investigator
D
iane Pataki knows a few things about an interdisciplinary approach to science. A trained ecologist she is as much at home as a fellow in the American Geophysical Union as she in a traditional biology department largely founded on the study of botanicals and mammals on both the taxonomic and molecular/cellular levels.
While currently a faculty member in the School of Biological Sciences as well as Associate Dean of Research in the College of Science, she is also the Associate Director of the U’s Center for Ecological Planning & Design in the College of Architecture + Planning. A further extension of her expertise and interest is in northern Utah where she holds an adjunct appointment in the Ecology Center and the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at Utah State University.
Emblematic of that outreach is one of Pataki’s current projects, the Landscape Lab, the construction of which begins the summer of 2019. The Lab is part of the U’s Center for Ecological Planning & Design, and will restore ecological and social functions to a portion of the Red Butte Creek watershed in the University’s Research Park. This in turn will increase access to recreational space for occupants of the nearby Williams Building, the campus community, and the public as a whole. The Lab will also test research questions about urban stream restoration, urban runoff management, hydrology, use of public space, and more.
Whether it’s developing an integrated socio-ecohydrologic framework to facilitate the understanding of and transitions to sustainable water systems, or giving the keynote address at
Central to the installation of the Landscape Lab is the hope of answering a persistent question of Pataki’s and other urban ecologists: Since eighty percent of Americans now live in an
Diane Pataki was recently named Associate Vice President of Research at the U.
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the Atmospheric Sciences Symposium at UC Berkeley, Pataki, a PhD graduate from the Duke University Nicholas School of Environment, sees her academic role as a convener of seemingly divergent sectors in pursuit of understanding the emergence of sustainable ecological practices. Little wonder then that her research of late in urban ecology has quickly bled into the kind of community outreach consistent with the “One U” concept, the idea that the University is as much “for” Utah as it is “of” Utah.
