Richard Streeter
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
A bit about me
Hi, my name is Richard, and I am in my first year of a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, where I also did my undergraduate degree in Geography. My PhD is looking at the impact of climatic change and the plague on landscape dynamics in medieval Iceland, and as part of this I will be developing an Agent Based Model that looks at land use choices open to the Norse, and the possible landscape impacts they may have.
In my spare time I like walking and camping, reading books and cooking. I am looking forward to meeting you all in Santa Fe and seeing the desert landscape.
What are your main interests? My main interests are in the field of palaeo-environmental research, in particular human/environment interactions in medieval Iceland. I am also interested in how complexity emerges and reveals itself in the landscape, in particular in the patterns and processes of soil erosion. Population change is also another interest of mine, and the ways it can impact on the choices faced by a society.
What expertise can you bring to the group? My undergraduate degree was in Geography, so the emergence of and changes in spatial patterns in landscapes through time is what I am familiar with. I can program in Java, but I’m still a beginner. Also, the human/environment history in the North Atlantic is my main specialism so if you want to know anything about the Vikings I should be able to help!
What do you hope to get out of the CSSS? I'd really like to explore the idea of a landscape as an emergent property of both physical environmental proceses and human agency, and the ways in which we can model this interface. I also hope to improve my mathematical understanding of the theory of complex science, and gain insight into other disciplines where it is used (eg. biology, social sciences etc).
Possible projects Nothing specific in mind but I am keen to work on something with Agent Based Models that interact with a landscape in some way.