Environmental Studies

Dr. Narcisa Pricope

Assistant Professor of Environmental Science

Science Hall 066

1250 Siskiyou Blvd.

Ashland, Oregon 97520

541-552-8185

pricopen@sou.edu

Areas of Specialization:
Land Change Science, Remote Sensing & GIS Applications in Watershed Science

Education:
B.A. 2004: Geography and English, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

M.S. 2006: Geosciences, Western Kentucky University, USA

Ph.D. 2011: Geography and Environmental Engineering, University of Florida, USA

Courses taught at SOU:
     

      Earth Science (ES 111 and 112) 

      Geographic Information Systems (ES 451)

      Geomorphology (ES 481)

      Maps, Cartography and Geospatial Technology (ES 349)

      Remote Sensing of the Environment (ES 453) 

      Sedimentology (G/ES 341)

      Watershed Management (ES 435 / 445)

Research Interests:

Narcisa Pricope is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Southern Oregon University and jointly appointed as a Visiting Researcher in the Climate Hazards Group in the Geography Department at University of California Santa Barbara. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary, applied questions at the intersection between land change science, watershed science, and population geography, primarily focusing on understanding the vulnerability of different populations to environmental change in the context of transboundary-managed water and natural resources. Narcisa examines the drivers, patterns and impacts of vegetation change and degradation on both ecosystems and people, having previously mostly worked in the southern and eastern African drylands. She uses spatially explicit modeling approaches, geographic information science and remote sensing imagery coupled with ground-based biophysical and social data to document and understand the causes and consequences of land cover changes at different spatial and temporal scales. Her work is mostly focused on drylands ecosystems as they are fragile and beautiful but also at increasingly high risk from various climate and environmental change impacts; they also cover approximately 40% of the Earth’s surface and are home to over 2 billion people, more than 90% of whom live in developing countries with increasing populations.

Narcisa's recently completed National Science Foundation-funded interdisciplinary dissertation was focused on understanding the relative importance of spatial and temporal changes in flooding and fire regimes in driving landscape and vegetation dynamics and how they affect the resilience of the human systems  in a semi-arid transboundary basin in the larger Zambezi Basin in Southern Africa. Narcisa’s current research is aimed at linking biophysical and remotely-sensed data with human health data to map population vulnerability to climate change and ecosystem degradation in the Horn region of Eastern Africa. This work is being undertaken in collaboration with climate researchers and demographers from the Climate Hazards Group and Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) Network under the joint direction of the United States Aid and International Development Agency and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Narcisa is passionate about this kind of applied work with implications for preparing for and predicting potential food insecurity episodes in various parts of Africa and, more generally, about understanding the dynamic factors causing food security crises in marginal lands undergoing environmental degradation. Her drylands work in Africa has allowed her to contribute to the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5) publication where she was a lead author on the "Land" Chapter and subsequently awarded a UNEP GEO-5 Fellowship for her contribution. Narcisa has also recently been selected as a scholar in the prestigious Dissertations Initiative for Climate Change Research (DISCCRS) Symposium funded by the NSF and NASA.

Regionally and locally, during her first year working at SOU, Narcisa has initiated a collaborative research project with the Ashland Forestry Resiliency Project (AFR) and installed a continuous water quality monitoring probe in the Ashland Creek in collaboration with AFR, the United States Department of Agriculture and the USGS. She intends to further develop these research links and projects and conduct relevant research to support the needs of local and regional stakeholders. Narcisa is highly committed to mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students at SOU and greatly enjoys helping them find ways to use their unique skills and achievements to bring science into action. Pending research support from several recently submitted grants to NASA, the National Health Institutes and the National Science Foundation, she hopes to develop research programs in the region and beyond with a high level of undergraduate and graduate student involvement, as well as travel abroad and exchange programs with collaborating institutions from Africa in particular.

Narcisa was a National Science Foundation Interdisciplinary Graduate Education and Traineeship (IGERT) associate at the University of Florida where she earned a PhD in Geography and Environmental Engineering in 2011. Previously, she earned a Master’s of Science degree in Geosciences at Western Kentucky University (2006) where she combined her love of rivers and caves with water quality monitoring programs and modeling landscape-level soil erosion in an agricultural watershed. Narcisa obtained her B.A. in Geography and English in 2004 from Babes-Bolyai University in Romania, once more focusing on her passion at the time: geomorphology. 

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

Pricope, N.G., Michaelsen, J., Lopez-Carr, D., Funk, C., and Husak, G. 2012. The climate-population nexus in the East African Horn: emerging degradation trends in rangeland and pastoral livelihood zones. Global Change Biology (In Review).

Pricope, Narcisa; Pardo, Lumari; Lopez-Carr, David. 2012. “Vulnerability to Climate Change.” 2012. In Oxford Bibliographies in Geography. Ed. Barney Warf. New York: Oxford University Press (In press).

Pricope, N.G. 2012. Variable-source flood pulsing in a semi-arid transboundary watershed: The Chobe River, Botswana and Namibia. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment: available online at:  (DOI) 10.1007/s10661-012-2675-0.

Pricope, N.G. 2012 (a, b, c). Trade winds deserts, Zambezian flooded grasslands, and Kalahari xeric savanna chapters in Biomes and Ecosystems: An Encyclopedia. Robert W. Howarth (Editor). Salem Press (In Press)

Pricope, N.G. and Binford, M.W. 2012. A spatio-temporal analysis of fire recurrence and extent for semi-arid savanna ecosystems using moderate resolution satellite imagery. Journal of Environmental Management 100: 72-85.

Pricope, N.G. 2010. Resilience. In Encyclopedia of Geography, Ed. Barney Warf. Vol. 5, pages 2437-2441 SAGE Publications Inc. (Recipient of the "Outstanding Reference Source" award at the American Library Association ALA 2011).

Pricope, N.G. 2010. International watershed management. In Encyclopedia of Geography, Ed. Barney Warf. Vol. 3, pages 1618-1620. SAGE Publications Inc. ("Outstanding Reference Source" award ALA 2011).

Pricope, N.G. 2009. Assessment of Spatial Patterns of Sediment Transport and Delivery for Soil and Water Conservation Programs. Journal of Spatial Hydrology  9(1) Spring 2009, 21-46.

All, J. and Pricope, N. G. 2008. How can sustainable land management contribute to mitigating climate change? Natural Resources Forum 32: 251-255.

Pricope, N.G. 2008. A measure of ecological resilience for climate change adaptation in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, Botswana and Namibia.  American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting Proceedings Volume, February 14 – 18, Boston, MA.  

Book Chapters and Other Publications:

Pricope, N.G. and Gaughan, A.E. 2012. Terrestrial Ecosystems: conflicts and opportunities. Ch. 7 in A Systems’ Approach to Natural Resources Management in southern Africa. Brown, Mark (editor).

Gaughan, A.E., Pricope, N.G., Venne, L. 2012. Biophysical drivers of ecosystem variability in southern Africa. Ch. 5 in A Systems Approach to Natural Resource Management in Southern Africa. Brown, Mark (editor).

Pricope, N.G., del Valle, H.S., Montoro, J.A., and Timmins, T. 2012. States and Trends of the World’s Drylands, Grasslands, and Savannas; The United Nations Environment Program GEO5 – Chapter 3: Land.

Masundire, H., del Valle, H.F., Pricope, N.G.., and Ayache, F. 2012. States and Trends of the World’s Wetlands; The United Nations Environment Program GEO5 – Chapter 3: Land.

Pricope, N.G. 2009. Detection of changes in flooding regime in a semi-arid savanna watershed in Southern Africa using AVHRR satellite imagery. The Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting Abstracts Volume, March 22 – 27, 2009. Las Vegas, NV.

Pricope, N.G. 2007. Assessing Spatial Patterns of Sediment Transport in the Pitman Creek Basin, Kentucky. The Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting Abstract Volume, April 17 - 21, San Francisco, CA.

Pricope, N.G. 2006. Modeling Soil Erosion in the Upper Green River, Kentucky. The Association of American Geographers 102^nd Annual Meeting Abstract Volume, March 14 – 19, Chicago, IL.

Pricope, N.G. 2006. Contribution to Western Kentucky University’s Technical Assistance Center for Water Quality: Supporting Small Water Systems in Meeting the Goal of Public Health Protection. Submitted to the US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water. October 31, 2006.