Susan J. Gilbertz, PhD is a professor of Geography and acting associate dean of the College of Business at Montana State University Billings. She grew up on a cattle ranch in rural Wyoming, and she earned BS and MA degrees in Communication from the University of Wyoming. Her PhD from Texas A&M University prepared her to return to the high plains, where she has focused on how senses of place influence environmental values and willingness to share natural resources. She has studied the people and resources of the Yellowstone River for over 17 years, and she has overseen more than 500 interviews with the people of the valley. Her projects have been sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the Yellowstone River Conservation District Council, the Harry L. Willett Foundation, and Montana State University Billings. Her publications can be found in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Geoforum, Professional Geographer, Land Use Policy, Water Resources Management , Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, Environmental Politics, European Journal of Sustainable Development, and the Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly, to name a few.
Damon M. Hall, PhD is an assistant professor at the University of Missouri in the School of Natural Resources and jointly appointed in Biomedical, Biological and Chemical Engineering. He received his BS in Agriculture and MA in Communication from Purdue University. He completed a PhD in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University as a Boone and Crockett Conservation Policy Fellow. His dissertation, Managing the Yellowstone River System with Place-Based Cultural Data, is an analysis of the 2006 Yellowstone Cultural Inventory data. After a postdoctoral fellowship in sustainability science at the University of Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative, he was an assistant professor in the Center for Sustainability and Department of Biology at Saint Louis University prior to joining the University of Missouri. In 2018, Damon joined the College of Engineering’s Sustainability in FEWSed (Food, Energy, Water, Smart Cities) research pillar. He is codirector of the Missouri Water Center, certificate coordinator for the undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability, and an affiliated faculty member in the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs. Dr. Hall’s research examines the human dimensions of sustainability challenges where science, policy, and culture meet. At Mizzou, he heads the Sustainability Science Lab (SustainabilityScienceLab.org), which includes projects in water resources planning, insect pollinator conservation, and communicating social–ecological systems models. His research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Park Service, and the Missouri Departments of Conservation and Natural Resources. His publications can be found in Conservation Biology, Sustainability Science, Environmental Science & Policy, Journal of Environmental Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Environmental Modelling & Software, Water Resources Management, and Water Resources Research, to name a few.