Current Research

Sonya Sachdeva is a computational social scientist with the US Forest Service in the greater Chicago area. Staffed with scientists from a wide range of backgrounds, “People and Their Environments” is one of only a few Forest Service research work units that studies the human component of natural resource management within urban ecosystems. Scientists in the unit conduct research on wide array of topics including the impact of climate change on conservation decision-making, understanding perceptions of air and water pollution and addressing environmental justice issues in urban environments. Sonya also has an adjunct appointment with the Environmental Policy & Culture program at Northwestern University. She holds a Bachelors in Economics from the University of Michigan and a doctoral degree in Cognitive Science from Northwestern University. Her current projects involve large-scale automated text analysis of climate change coverage in the media, field assessments of the efficacy of environmental programs and behavioral experiments to study the impact of resource scarcity on conservation behavior.

Education

• Northwestern University, Ph.D. Cognitive Science 2010
• Northwestern University, M.S. Cognitive Science 2006
• University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, B.S Economics & Biological Psychology 2005

Publications

• Floress, Kristin ; Sachdeva, Sonya . 2019. Novel and Controversial Methods in the Social Sciences: Introduction to Special Issue.
• Sachdeva, Sonya ; Boghrati, Reihane ; Dehghani, Morteza . 2019. Testing the Influence of Purity-Based Interventions on Pro-environmental Behavior.
• Lindsey, Greg ; Qi, Yunlei ; Gobster, Paul H.; Sachdeva, Sonya . 2019. The 606 at three: Trends in use of Chicago's elevated Rail-Trail.
• Schertz, Kathryn E.; Sachdeva, Sonya; Kardan, Omid; Kotabe, Hiroki P.; Wolf, Kathleen L.; Berman, Marc G. 2018. A thought in the park: The influence of naturalness and low-level visual features on expressed thoughts.
• Sachdeva, Sonya; Emery, Marla R.; Hurley, Patrick T. 2018. Depiction of Wild Food Foraging Practices in the Media: Impact of the Great Recession.
• Arakawa, Sachi; Sachdeva, Sonya; Shandas, Vivek. 2018. Environmental stewardship: Pathways to community cohesion and cultivating meaningful engagement.
• Browning, Matthew H.E.M.; Kuo, Ming; Sachdeva, Sonya; Lee, Kangjae; Westphal, Lynne. 2018. Greenness and school-wide test scores are not always positively associated A replication of "linking student performance in Massachusetts elementary schools with the 'greenness' of school surroundings using remote sensing".
• Kuo, Ming ; Browning, Matthew H. E. M.; Sachdeva, Sonya ; Lee, Kangjae ; Westphal, Lynne . 2018. Might School Performance Grow on Trees Examining the Link Between Greenness and Academic Achievement in Urban, High-Poverty Schools.
• Sachdeva, Sonja ; McCaffrey, Sarah . 2018. Using social media to predict air pollution during California wildfires.
• Gobster, Paul H.; Sachdeva, Sonya; Lindsey, Greg. 2017. Up on The 606. Understanding the Use of a New Elevated Pedestrian and Bicycle Trail in Chicago, Illinois.
• Sachdeva, Sonya. 2016. Religious identity, beliefs, and views about climate change.
• Sachdeva, Sonya; McCaffrey, Sarah M.; Locke, Dexter. 2016. Social media approaches to modeling wildfire smoke dispersion: spatiotemporal and social scientific investigations.
• Sachdeva, Sonya. 2016. The influence of sacred beliefs in environmental risk perception and attitudes.
• Sachdeva, Sonya; Jordan, Jennifer; Mazar, Nina. 2015. Green consumerism: moral motivations to a sustainable future.

Research Highlights

Highlight	Title	Year
NRS-2018-111	Tree Cover Boosts Academic Performance in Chicago Public Schools An analysis of academic achievement within Chicago Public Schools suggests that a higher proportion of tree cover, relative to grass and other v ...	2018
NRS-2017-8	Understanding resident use of a new elevated pedestrian and bicycle trail Monitoring use of a new elevated trail in Chicago provides important information to city managers. Preliminary results suggest that "The 606" ha ...	2017
NRS-2016-105	Using Tweets to Model Wildfire Smoke Forest Service scientists and their partners found that crowdsourced data collected from Twitter can be used to accurately predict air quality i ...	2016