Steven Scyphers, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Marine & Environmental Sciences, Northeastern University | Faculty Affiliate, Global Resilience Institute
Boston, MA, UNITED STATES
Research in my lab focuses on understanding and enhancing the sustainability of coastal ecosystems and societies
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Biography
Research in my lab focuses on understanding and enhancing the sustainability of coastal ecosystems and societies. We are particularly interested in tackling issues related to resource management, shoreline development, and urbanization. Most of our current projects involve: 1) coastlines as coupled coupled social-ecological systems, 2) participatory conservation and management of ecosystems, and 3) social outcomes of environmental management.
Embracing a social-ecological systems perspective, our research typically involves coupling social science survey or interview methodologies (e.g., stated preference surveys, choice experiments, fuzzy-logic cognitive mapping) with biophysical and ecological data, and increasingly geospatial analyses and scenario modeling. We routinely collaborate with diverse teams of natural and social scientists, engineers, practitioners, and stakeholders.
Areas of Expertise (7)
Sustainability Science
Fisheries
Resource Management
Coastal Development
Mitigating Disaster Impacts
Conservation
Social-Ecological Systems
Education (2)
University of South Alabama: Ph.D., Marine Sciences
Specialization in: Coastal Ecology and Environment Sociology.
Auburn University: B.S., Marine Biology 2007
Links (2)
Media Appearances (5)
Student launches campaign to promote sustainable diving practices
News @ Northeastern
2018-01-04
Robertson’s undergraduate research inspired this campaign. She explored recreational diving a bit deeper as part of a Scholars Independent Research Fellowship. She did this work earlier this year at the university’s Marine Science Center under the guidance of assistant professor Steven Scyphers...
Walls Won't Save Our Cities From Rising Seas. Here's What Will
NBC News
2017-09-19
"Building a living shoreline starts with a good understanding of what the natural condition along that shoreline once was," says Steven Scyphers, a coastal scientist at Northeastern University. He adds that the process of creating a living shoreline might be as straightforward as restoring what once existed at the site — whether it’s oyster reefs, coral reefs, or other living breakwaters that dissipate wave energy...
Researchers mine Twitter to reveal Congress’ ideological divide on climate change
News @ Northeastern
2016-05-30
The study sprang from the researchers’ desire to make their forecasts more accessible to policymakers. The coauthors of the paper are Tarik Gouhier, assistant professor, and Steven Scyphers, associate research scientist, both in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences at Northeastern, and Jenn Mocarski, administrative assistant in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs...
Northeastern co-hosts Capitol Hill briefing on coastal sustainability
News @ Northeastern
2017-04-27
Florida International University’s Washington, D.C. branch co-hosted the briefing, which was streamed live on its Facebook page. In addition to Trussell, panelists included U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, a member of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus; Craig McLean, assistant administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office; Todd Crowl, director of FIU’s Southeast Environmental Research Center; and Steven Scyphers, assistant professor in Northeastern’s College of Science...
Science and politics: Finding common ground
News @ Northeastern
2017-02-14
Helmuth and his colleagues, including assistant professors Tarik Gouhier and Steven Scyphers, who heads the Social-Ecological Sustainability Lab, analyzed the nearly 79,000 Twitter accounts followed by the 89 U.S. senators of the 114th Congress that were publicly available in February 2015 to see which legislators followed research-oriented science organizations. In their paper, which was published by the journal Climate Change Responses, they also tracked how the science-related follows compared with the senators’ votes on amendments to the Keystone XL pipeline bill, including one acknowledging the significant role of human activity in causing climate change...
Articles (3)
Investing in natural and nature-based infrastructure: building better along our coasts
Sustainability
Ariana E Sutton-Grier, Rachel K Gittman, Katie K Arkema, Richard O Bennett, Jeff Benoit, Seth Blitch, Kelly A Burks-Copes, Allison Colden, Alyssa Dausman, Bryan M DeAngelis, A Randall Hughes, Steven B Scyphers, Jonathan H Grabowski
2018 Much of the United States' critical infrastructure is either aging or requires significant repair, leaving US communities and the economy vulnerable. Outdated and dilapidated infrastructure places coastal communities, in particular, at risk from the increasingly frequent and intense coastal storm events and rising sea levels. Therefore, investments in coastal infrastructure are urgently needed to ensure community safety and prosperity; however, these investments should not jeopardize the ecosystems and natural resources that underlie economic wealth and human well-being...
Ecosystem services are lost when facilitation between two ecosystem engineers is compromised by oil
Marine Ecology Progress Series
Sean P Powers, Shahrokh Rouhani, Mary C Baker, Henry Roman, Jonathan H Grabowski, Steven B Scyphers, Jonathan M Willis, Mark W Hester
2017 Nearshore marine ecosystems are among the most productive areas in the world. Unfortunately, these areas also receive pollutants released into oceanic and riverine waters. Six years following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest in US history, the complexity of ecological injuries in this system is just now being elucidated. Here, we describe a novel pathway of injury from oil spills by documenting how the loss of oysters near marsh edge as a direct result of shoreline oiling and clean-up activities can double rates of coastal erosion...
Inclusion of Biodiversity in Habitat Restoration Policy to Facilitate Ecosystem Recovery
Conservation Letters
A Randall Hughes, Jonathan H Grabowski, Heather M Leslie, Steven Scyphers, Susan L Williams
2017 Maintaining biodiversity is a central tenet of conservation, in part because biodiversity influences ecosystem functions across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems. Biodiversity‐ecosystem function relationships have clear relevance for the design of habitat restoration efforts, yet the degree to which biodiversity has been incorporated into restoration practice is unclear. We conducted a review of the published literature on habitat restoration to evaluate this potential science‐practice gap...
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