Joshua Lewis, MSUS ‘16, is taking care of environmentally significant land
As Conservation Coordinator at French Creek Valley Conservancy (FCVC), Joshua Lewis, MSUS ’16, is responsible for just over 2200 acres of land. And not just any land—environmentally significant land. “Each plot of land we conserve has to have ecological significance;” he says, “there’s a reason we’re protecting it. It could be right along a creek and be a specific habitat, or it could be a nice large plot with old woods that protects the headwaters.”
Lewis came to Chatham’s Falk School of Sustainability & Environment after majoring in environmental studies at Slippery Rock University. “I felt like I needed more experience, more schooling, so that’s what I did,” he says. At Chatham, as part of his Sustainability masters program, he continued working with GIS and mapping—skills he had developed in internships as an undergraduate. Lewis remembers a project he did in his Urban Planning and Political Ecology class. The class went into the Pittsburgh community of Millvale, split into teams, and worked on developing solutions for Millvale’s flooding problems. Lewis’s team was tasked with reconceptualizing an abandoned parking lot, to see if it could help contain the urban runoff through interventions, including installing bioswales and permeable gravel. “We presented to the community at the end of the semester,” he says.
“I liked all the topics around planning and integrating with different city neighborhoods,” Lewis continues, “but I was also interested in calculating carbon footprints and working with data to see what impact we were having.” So that’s what he did for his senior thesis: examined the carbon footprint of Chatham’s Athletic Department. “I calculated their carbon footprint and then gave suggestions for improvements and areas where they could look to reduce their footprint,” he says. “I really enjoyed that, and it got me working with larger data sets, and managing data, and that transformed into my first job at the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD).”
At the ACHD, Lewis was working on a grant the goal of which was to look at the intersection of cardiovascular health and social determinants of health—things like where you live, poverty levels, air pollution—and trying to create a predictive model for it. “At first it seemed like it didn’t have very much at all to do with the environment, but it ended up being a good bit of crossover,” says Lewis.
In his role at the FCVC, Lewis works closely with the FCVC’s Land Protection Specialist, who works with landowners to acquire the land. “There are restrictions on what people can do on the land,” he says, “so, for example, you usually can’t subdivide and develop it. Once the Land Protection Specialist acquires the land, I come in and figure out how we’re going to take care of it. That involves a lot of different things, for example, we’re responsible for monitoring our properties at least once per year, to make sure that no one’s doing anything illegal there, such as cutting down trees or riding their ATVs through our land. It’s a big responsibility when people entrust us with their land.”
Today, in addition to stewarding the 37 properties—some 400 acres, some one-acre-- Lewis is also tasked with encouraging people to enjoy them.
“While we have a big responsibility to protect the land, we also want people to get out and enjoy the lands we protect, too. I’m responsible for trying to get people out through different stewardship events, for example, when we clean it up.
“I really like being a part of the process that lets people conserve their lands. We think about the stewardship upfront during the acquisition process: What are we going to do with it once we get it? Most people who donate land, it’s important to them for one reason or another, and I like helping people protect the land that they love” Lewis says.
The Master of Sustainability (MSUS) program – part of Chatham's Falk School of Sustainability & Environment – is a cohort-based program that educates and trains the sustainability leaders of tomorrow.