Bio

Advisor and Program

Dr. Bethany Cutts
Geospatial Analytics, NC State University

About

My ancestors were farmers, and I grew up walking through rice fields during summer break. My roots have shaped how I see land, local knowledge, and rural life, and they continue to guide my work as a researcher. I want to bring local knowledge, participatory mapping, and remote sensing/GIS to the same table to monitor crop health and soil conditions based on on-ground realities of farming communities. I want to promote research and education that does not just collect data from the field but comes with a solution and makes the research participants part of it. I hope my doctoral study can help produce maps and monitoring tools based on local knowledge that support location-tailored decision-making and adaptation strategies. Then it will reflect the mission, vision, and purpose SE CASC is built for. That would make me the true emissary of the Global Change Research Fellowship.

Research Interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of land-use change, climate adaptation, local knowledge, and spatial methods. I am thrilled to immerse myself in long-term academia along these themes in diverse agricultural/non-agricultural landscapes. I aim to understand how climate variability is experienced by farmers/local people and then utilize remote sensing and GIS to track land-use changes and crop conditions across seasons and years. I want to develop a methodology that integrates local knowledge with geospatial tools to generate evidence-based findings for informed decision-making. An important part of my work is developing participatory mapping that is collaborative and avoids extractive research practices.