Kelly Hopping Profile

Assistant Professor
Department of Human-Environment Systems

Office Phone: (208) 426-4152
E-mail: kellyhopping@boisestate.edu
Office: EEB 4155

Link to personal web page(s)

Kelly Hopping Profile Page

• Social and ecological impacts of climate change
• Local/traditional knowledge of environmental change
• Coping and adaptation
• Mountains and rangelands

My research examines how communities and ecosystems are responding to global change, particularly in mountains and grasslands. I integrate a variety of approaches to understand these changes, including ecological experiments and observations, interviews, and analysis of satellite imagery.

To date, my work has focused primarily on Asian highlands, and especially the Tibetan Plateau, where climate warming and changing precipitation patterns (such as an increase in both drought and severe snowstorms) are adversely affecting alpine and grassland ecosystems and the livelihoods of those who depend on them. I am also interested in how these environmental changes are interacting with natural resource management policies, which can either help or hinder communities’ ability to cope with and adapt to the changes they face.

My collaboration with the Mountain Sentinels Network has also sought to illuminate the challenges facing mountain social-ecological systems globally. As part of this effort, we have developed an integrated community and ecosystem-based approach to disaster risk reduction in mountains.

I am interested in collaborating on transdisciplinary projects about the social and ecological impacts of climate change, as well as peoples’ perceptions of and responses to environmental change.

• EEB 601: Principles and Processes in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

• Mountain Sentinels Collaborative Network