Mona Behl
William & Mary, VA·Social Science
Rising seas and coastal disasters could force millions of U.S. residents from their homes by 2100.
- Fields
Social Science
Earth & Environmental Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
coastal change
sea level rise
human mobility
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Foster analysis and synthesis research on human mobility caused by coastal change, including displacement, migration and planned relocation, using existing datasets and legal and policy frameworks.
- Stimulate collaboration across the natural and social sciences by engaging researchers, resource managers and stakeholders from U.S. coastal communities to identify place-based research priorities.
- Identify and tailor existing products, or create new usable tools and knowledge, to help coastal and receiving communities build resilience and adapt to coastal change.
More about the research
Research has paid little attention to what happens to the communities that receive these people, and those communities may be unprepared. It is also unclear how population shifts interact with economic, cultural, political and environmental conditions. These conditions can help people stay where they are, push them to leave, or draw them elsewhere. Human mobility here includes displacement, migration and planned relocation.
Why it matters
Coastal communities facing sea level rise, and the inland communities that may receive people relocating from the coast, need practical knowledge to plan ahead. This work could provide tools, research priorities and policy-relevant findings to help them cope with displacement, migration and planned relocation. It could also help them build resilience to coastal change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ted Hsuan Yun Chen
George Mason University, VA·Social Science
Develop a survey-based measurement approach and conceptual framework for belief networks, capturing how attitudes on climate, migration and social fairness influence one another within individuals.
Alejandra Ortiz
Colby College, ME·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Quantify how atoll islands have changed in size and shape over decades by combining the long Landsat satellite archive with high-resolution Planet Labs imagery, expanding a global database of atoll morphometrics.
Jacqueline Richard
Nunez Community College, LA·Earth & Environmental Science
Characterize water and sediment pathways through crevasses on the lower Mississippi River, including how individual crevasses interact with the main channel and with each other.
The school
William & Mary: 11 labs on PI Pages, $95M a year on research, 67 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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