Contact: James Carskadon
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Stakeholders gathered at Mississippi State University this week to focus on increasing the Magnolia State’s resilience to growing environmental and man-made threats.
On Tuesday [Oct. 8], MSU hosted the inaugural Pathways to Resilience Summit, which featured insights from academia, state and federal government officials, as well as private industry and non-profits. The event was hosted by MSU’s Office of Research and Economic Development, along with the Division of Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine and the Mississippi Conservation Task Force.
Narcisa Pricope, MSU associate vice president for research and lead organizer for the conference, noted that resilience to natural disasters is top of mind for many people in the Southeast as hurricanes continue to cause significant damage.
“Everything we do, where we live and how we exist really depends on the safety and health of our environment,” Pricope said. “Environmental security is a key component of our national security.”
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, who established the Mississippi Conservation Task Force to help unify different conservation efforts and encourage a statewide approach, said meetings like this can help drive the state forward.
“We want to use science that considers the complexities of an entire ecosystem, rather than making small regional decisions which may fix one problem in the Delta but create three problems for the Coast,” Watson said. “This is about doing the right thing for the people of our state.”
The summit highlighted the many complexities, both locally and internationally, that impact how resilient a community is to natural and man-made challenges. While the event focused on Mississippi, speakers emphasized that these issues do not stay within state and national borders.
“There is no such thing as a local problem,” said Robert Sharp, a retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral and former director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. “They cross regional boundaries and do not exist in isolation.”
Austin Davis, an MSU alumnus and technical director for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Geospatial Research Lab, provided the luncheon keynote and shared how advances in artificial intelligence and geospatial technologies are helping enhance both predictions of what will happen in certain environmental scenarios and inform how people respond.
“Geospatial technologies are the means by which we understand place in the modern era,” Davis said.
Participants also discussed pursuing a Sentinel Landscape designation for the state of Mississippi. A federal designation earned in cooperation with local stakeholders, Sentinel Landscapes help advance sustainable land use practices around military installations and ranges.
Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at www.msstate.edu.