Michelle Lovejoy
Manager, Resilient Landscapes
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
Journal Articles
Natural Infrastructure as a Flood Mitigation Tool on working lands in the NC Coastal Plain, 2021
Multi-Species Cover Crops impacts to soil health in SE Farming Systems, 2021
Landowner preferences and market drivers for conservation programs, 2014
Ecosystem crediting processes for threatened and endangered species, 2015
Glacial marine sedimentation & sourcing analysis, Vancouver Island, Canada and Glacier Bay, Alaska, 1999
Research
Groundwater modeling of salt transport along the Saltville Fault, VA
Resistivity analysis of groundwater surge into the New River, Radford Virginia
Resistivity analysis and groundwater modeling of the saltwater lens under Hatteras Island, NC
Geologic mapping of the Dolomites, northeastern Italy