Environmental Studies

Daniel Carter

Director of and Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Daniel Carter is currently serving as the Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Sewanee, teaching courses in Environmental Policy, Introduction to Environmental Studies, Environmental Education, and Land-use Policy. Daniel was born, raised and currently lives on a cattle and sheep farm in the Sewanee region and has a passion for land conservation. He spent several years prior to his current academic service as a county government consultant with the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service, working with rural local elected officials in Tennessee. Daniel is currently the President of the Tennessee River Gorge Trust, a land trust responsible for protecting approximately 17,000 acres in the scenic and biologically diverse Tennessee River Gorge. His research involves analyzing the cultural, financial, and environmental impacts of land-use change in the south Cumberland Plateau as timber companies have divested thousands of acres for development purposes in recent years.

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Sarah C. Sherwood

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and University Archaeologist

I am an Anthropological Archaeologist with a specialty in Geoarchaeology. I work in two areas of the world, the Southeastern US and Eastern Europe. On the Southern Cumberland Plateau I am specifically interested in prehistoric land use change over time and site formation processes of sandstone rockshelters. Beyond the Plateau I study the geoarchaeology of prehistoric earthworks and mounds and how they are built. In Eastern Europe I primarily work in Romania and Serbia on “urban” tells where Neolithic and later Bronze Age people congregated. My focus there is on stratigraphy and the anthropogenic sediments that reveal daily activities and spatial organization, primarily using soil/sediment micromorphology. All of this research is carried out in collaboration with my Sewanee students, various graduate students, and my archaeology and geology colleagues at Sewanee and several other institutions. As the University Archaeologist here at Sewanee I work with the Office of Domain Management to manage the cultural resources on the University’s 13,000 acres. We are committed to the study and protection of this rich and diverse archaeological record that includes rock art, caves, rockshelters and other interesting historic and prehistoric sites.

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Christopher Van de Ven

GIS Instructor and Manager of the Landscape Analysis Lab

Dr. Van de Ven teaches introductory and advanced courses on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), manages the Landscape Analysis Lab, and conducts leads a variety of GIS projects with Sewanee students on the Domain and surrounding region. Chris is a geologist whose research interests are in the interactions between vegetation, geology, and topography. His research has past focused on plant distributions and vegetation modeling and near-surface cold-air drainage within and across mountains. As manager of the Landscape Analysis Lab, he maintains and catalogs local and regional GIS data and supervises a project collecting and cataloging the historic land use activity through Sewanee's history. In addition to maintaining GIS data for the University, the Landscape Analysis Lab also provides GIS support for the University, providing GIS data and maps for various departments, classes, and committees, as well as individual faculty and student research projects.