Christopher G. Boone  Associate Professor, School of Human Evolution & Social Change, School of Sustainability

Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1994
M.A., University of Toronto, 1989
B.A, Queen's University (Canada), 1987

Post-Doctoral Fellow, McGill University, 1993-95

Contact information:
cgboone@asu.edu
(480) 727-6017

Office:
SHESC 166
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402

Research expertise: urban sustainability, environmental justice, vulnerability, urban socio-ecological systems, GIS, public health.

For a complete c.v., click here.

I hold a joint appointment with the School of Human Evolution & Social Change (SHESC) and the School of Sustainability (SOS). I teach courses in both schools and am the Graduate Director for the School of Sustainability.  I have a B.A. in Geography from Queen's University (Canada). My Ph.D. (1994) is from the University of Toronto and I held a post-doctoral fellowship at McGill University from 1993 to 1995.

Over the past decade I have devoted a considerable amount of my time on research with the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (http://beslter.org), an Urban Long Term Ecological Research site. Since arriving at ASU, I have also undertaken research for the Central Arizona Phoenix LTER, the only other urban LTER site in the country (http://caplter.asu.edu/). Working at ASU offers an opportunity to participate in cross-site comparative work between these two LTER organizations. Bob Bolin (SHESC) and I are working on a comparative study of environmental equity patterns in Phoenix and Baltimore, which we and others plan to expand to a wider geographic scope. In 2006, I was awarded a NSF Human and Social Dynamics grant to investigate the longitudinal dynamics of environmental equity patterns and processes in Baltimore through a long term analysis (1880-2000) of population characteristics in relation to environmental amenities and disamenities (see abstract).  I am on a team of ASU investigators that was recently awarded a NSF-HSD grant to assess the impact of immigration reform on the health and economic well-being of Latino communities in Phoenix.  I am also an investigator with Alex Brewis, professor of medical anthropology, on a number of proposals to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the USDA that address environmental and cultural determinants of health, especially obesity.  With Jay Golden, assistant professor in the School of Sustainability, and others, I have submitted grant proposals to NASA, EPA, Science Foundation of Arizona, and NSF to examine, among other issues, heat vulnerability in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.  I am presently working on a bioinformatics proposal to the National Institutes of Health that will link diagnostic records to built environmental characteristics in Phoenix. 

In the last three years, I have been involved with a number of proposals that address sustainability, environmental justice, vulnerability, and public health concerns in Phoenix and Baltimore. In December 2006, I participated in the first Chinese Academy of Sciences and ASU workshop on urban sustainability in Beijing, China. In July 2008, I returned to China for a meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on long-term ecological research. This spring I will be participating in the IHDP (http://www.ihdp.org/) Open Meeting in Bonn, Germany. In summer 2009, I will present a paper on our findings from the long-term environmental equity study at the first World Environmental History conference (http://wceh2009.org/) in Copenhagen, Denmark.  

At ASU, I have taught courses on urban sustainability, environmental justice, urban environmental health, and research methods in sustainability science. This fall, I will be co-teaching Perspectives on Sustainability, a required course for all incoming SOS graduate students.