Research — Patrick Bitterman

This page links to various ongoing and past research projects. Click on project titles to see additional details. If you have any additional questions, feel free to contact me at p bitterm@kent.edu.

Current Projects

GCR: Convergent Anthropocene Systems (Anthems) An Agile, System-of-Systems Engineering Approach

This project is a recently-funded that will start in October 2023. It aims to develop a new convergent paradigm and related modeling tools for large-scale research on socio-environmental problems in the Anthropocene.
Link to NSF award page: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2317876&HistoricalAwards=false

CNH2-L: Modelling the dynamics of human and estuarine systems with regulatory feedbacks

This is an NSF-funded project under the Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) program. As a group, we are modeling the complex dynamics linking water quality in the Chesapeake Bay to governance response across multiple scales in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
Link to project page: https://sites.google.com/umces.edu/cnh-l-mdhesrf/
Link to NSF proposal page: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2009248&HistoricalAwards=false

The Atlas of Iowa

While I don’t really consider myself a cartographer (and definitely not a historical geographer), I had the opportunity to work with some amazing colleagues on the Atlas of Iowa, which will be published in August, 2024. Dr. Archer, Dr. Shelley, and I earned our PhDs in Geography at the University of Iowa, while Dr. Shepard worked in the U of I libraries for some time. My contributions focused on the socio-environmental impacts of the agricultural system, land use, some of the physical geography sections, and just a bit of the state’s cultural heritage.

Social vulnerability to floods in Nebraska

Our research lab is currently analyzing the determinants of social vulnerability to compound flood events in medium-sized cities along the Platte River in Nebraska.

A a typology of bottom-up, watershed-scale governance structures in the US

Our lab, aided by undergraduate researchers as part of UNL’s UCARE program, is taking stock of the various watershed-scale governance jurisdictions across the US. Our objective is to characterize the range of legal authorities across the country.

Past Projects

Modeling water governance in the Lake Champlain Basin

This work investigates how multilevel governance structures in the Lake Champlain Basin affect land use, water quality, and ecosystem services.

Risk perceptions in the provision of aquatic ecosystem services

This project is a SESYNC pursuit and a large-scale collaboration among researchers from (at least) 12 institutions. We’re working to compare water quality and adaptive management in the Lake Champlain and Lake Erie social-ecological systems.

Ecosystem service valuation and socio-cultural phenomena

This project was an interesting collaboration sparked by the NSF IGERT program and a workshop at Portland State University. We produced a framework for incorporating socio-cultural phenomena in the non-monetary valuation of cultural ecosystem services.

Farmer adaptability to climate change in the Iowa-Cedar River Basin

My primary research project at the University of Iowa explored the resilience and adaptability of the coupled human-natural system in the Iowa-Cedar River Basin. I developed and coupled an agent-based model of farmer land use decisions to climatic and biophysical models to better understand the economic and environmental effects of farmer adaptability.