Michelle Lovejoy
Manager, Climate Resilient Coasts & Watersheds North Carolina
Work
Michelle Lovejoy works on the North Carolina landscape resilience project—a bold and collaborative effort to ensure that resilient ecosystems and communities along the state’s coasts and rivers thrive and are safe, equitable and prosperous places to live, work and play. A key aspect of her work is advancing resilient thinking to help at-risk communities prepare for ongoing and projected climate impacts by advancing science, building local capacity and funding nature-based solutions.
As part of this work, Michelle helps build diverse coalitions and advocates for practical and technically sound policy solutions to address climate risks and build social and environmental resilience. She works to ensure local voices are incorporated into policies and programs by engaging directly with community leaders, agricultural stakeholders and town residents, including rural, minority and under-resourced communities.
Background
Michelle has spent her career working at the intersection of working lands and landscape-scale climate change solutions, as evidenced by her previous experience and leadership working on farming, forestry, flood mitigation and natural infrastructure solutions in North Carolina and beyond.
Her breadth of experience ranges from the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscapes Partnership, which supports landscapes in military training priority areas like Fort Bragg, Marine Corps Camp Lejeune and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, to soil health initiatives that deliver resources to farmers allowing for less synthetic inputs in production agriculture systems.
Michelle also led North Carlina’s Visioning the Future of Conservation Delivery — a process to identify overarching strategic directions among seven core member organizations of local conservation districts, regional Resource Conservation and Development Councils, the state Department of Agriculture’s Division of Soil and Water Conservation, the Soil and Water Commission, the Association of Conservation Districts, the Conservation District Employee Association and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Education
Natural Resources Leadership Institute Fellow, 2007
Master of Science in Environmental and Engineering Geosciences, Radford University, 2004
Bachelor of Arts in Geology, Mathematics, and Anthropology, Appalachian State University, 1999
Publications
Hovis, M., Cubbage, F., Smith, G., Zuniga-Teran, A., Varady, R., Shear, T., Lupek, M., Baldwin, M., Fox, A., Sand, A., Potter, T., Lovejoy, M., Larick, K., Evans, B. (in press). Estimating landowner’s willingness to accept payments for nature-based solutions in Eastern North Carolina for flood hazard mitigation using the contingent valuation method. Soil and Water Conservation Society.
Hovis, M., Cubbage, F., Hollinger, J.C., Shear, T., Doll, B., Kurki-Fox, J., Line, D., Lovejoy, M., Evans, B., Potter, T. (2022). Determining the costs, revenues, and cost-share payments for the “floodwise” program: Nature-based solutions to mitigate flooding in eastern, rural North Carolina. Nature-Based Solutions, 2, 100016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbsj.2022.100016
Doll, B. A., Kurki-Fox, J., Line, D., Cubbage, F., Shear, T., Harrison, J., Lovejoy, M., BenDor, T. K., Fox, A., Baldwin, M., Klondike, T., Salvesen, D. (2021). Natural systems: Improving resilience to coastal riverine flooding. In Collaboratory flood resilience study: Final report to the North Carolina General Assembly, June 2021 (pp. 28-35). NC Policy Collaboratory. Retrieved from https://collaboratory.unc.edu/current-projects/flood-resiliency-hub/flood-resilience/
Franzluebbers, A.J, Broome, S.W., Pritchett, M.G., Lowder, N., Woodruff, S., Lovejoy, M. (2021). Multispecies cover cropping promotes soil health in no-tillage cropping systems of North Carolina. Soil and Water Conservation Society, 76(3), 263-275. https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.2021.00087
Hovis, M., Hollinger, J.C., Cubbage, F., Shear, T., Doll, B., Kurki-Fox, J.J., Line, D., Fox, A., Baldwin, M., Klondike, T., Lovejoy, M., Evans, B., West, J., Potter, T. (2021). Natural infrastructure practices as potential flood storage and reduction for farms and rural communities in the North Carolina Coastal Plain. Sustainability, 13, 9309. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169309
Singh, D., Cubbage, F., Peterson, N., Lovejoy, M., Pope, J., Jervis, S., Serenari, C., Dube, A., Hays, B. (2016). A certainty program framework for market-based conservation of longleaf pine conservation. In G.E. Frey & P. Nepal (Eds.), Forest economics and policy in a changing environment: How market, policy, and climate transformations affect forests: Proceedings of the 2016 Meeting of the International Society of Forest Resource Economics (pp. 63-72). USDA, US Forest Service Southern Research Station. E-General Technical Report SRS-218. https://www.isfre.msstate.edu/docs/2016_proceedings.pdf#page=73