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Keith G. Tidball
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M.A.
George Washington University Keith G. Tidball
joined the Department of Natural Resources in 2003. He serves as Associate
Director of the Civic Ecology Initiative where he helps people organize,
learn, and act in ways that increase their capacity to withstand, and
where appropriate to grow from, environmental change and uncertainty.
He focuses on efforts that nurture cultural and ecological diversity,
create opportunities for civic participation, and that foster learning
from different types of knowledge to increase community capacity and resilience.
He works to connect people with plants and animals in urban contexts for
purposes of education, community restoration and regeneration, and biodiversity
conservation through Civic Ecology programs such as the National Science
Foundation funded Garden Mosaics program. His research in Environmental
Security, Community Based Approaches to Urban Natural Resource Management
and Civic Ecology pursues questions such as: What role might natural resources,
defined broadly, play in restoring societal equilibrium and community
resilience in urban environments? How might community based natural resources
management knowledge and approaches be adopted for use in field expedient
conflict resolution "tool kits," especially for use in urban
contexts? What role might the field of natural resources play in national
and international strategic planning for post-conflict and other potentially
volatile transition scenarios?
Research
Cities experiencing
social chaos may be viewed as socio-ecological systems that, as a result
of a disturbance such as disaster or conflict coupled with lack of resilience,
have shifted into a qualitatively different, undesirable state. Mr. Tidball
has argued that urban community greening and other "civic ecology"
approaches that integrate natural, human, social, financial, and physical
capital in cities, and that encompass diversity, self-organization, and
adaptive learning and management leading to positive feedback loops, have
the potential to play a key role in developing urban community resilience
before a disaster or conflict strikes. His current research applies resilience
theory to urban socio-ecological systems, attempts to expand comparative
analysis of resilience narratives in cities to encompass more community-based
and environmental approaches, and proposes an asset- and community-based
tool, i.e., urban community greening, which can serve as the focus of
social learning about resilience in cities. See Tidball
and Krasny, Risk to Resilience: Urban Community Greening and Civic Ecology.
Extension
Mr. Tidball is primarily
engaged in extension efforts which focus on engaging urban people in Civic
Ecology. Civic Ecology Education integrates learning from scientists and
community members, and community action. The goal of Civic Ecology Education is to build resilient communities, through enabling youth and adults to
develop and apply an understanding of science and of diverse cultures,
and to become active, contributing, and informed members of their community.
Civic Ecology Education builds on and reinforces existing community assets.
See Krasny
and Tidball, Civic Ecology Education: A Systems Approach to Resilience
and Learning in Cities
Selected Publications
B.A. University of Kentucky