Eliza M. Breder
Eliza researches policies and histories of environmental injustices and flood risk, examining legacies and systems of oppression that enable inequitable disaster risks impacting low-income communities in Deltaic landscapes throughout Florida and the U.S. Her methods focus on community participation, geospatial analysis, storiation, and advocacy.
Prior to joining Berkeley’s PhD program, Eliza worked for three years as a graduate research assistant at the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER) focusing on sea level rise and watershed planning. During her time at FIBER she organized community workshops around flooding, adaptation, and nature-based solutions that required geospatial analyses, iterative design solutions, and archival research. She completed her Master of Landscape Architecture at the University of Florida where her thesis focused on environmental injustices related to flood risk at coastal brownfield sites. Her background is in sustainability and the built environment (BSc) with a focus in urban and regional planning, water supply, and informal settlements. During her undergraduate program she studied and interned in Curitiba, Brazil, working in the field on water supply in local neighborhoods. Before returning to school for design, she worked for four years in a water conservation research group and completed a Master of Science degree in Agricultural and Biological Engineering (MSc) focusing on irrigation and water resources. During her time working in water conservation she statistically analyzed big data sets in R, a programming software. Her education in hydrology and data science led her to work in water management as a hydrologist and at public health research institutes as a data analyst where she managed projects on zika and cholera cases. Her background in planning and water resources make her passionate about the communities and spaces embedded within dynamic hydrologic systems. Currently, she works in the Just Environments Lab led by Danielle Rivera that centers justice and equity in environmental planning.
2023 | Social and Psychological Factors in Open Space Design | Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental Planning, UC Berkeley
2023 | Ecological Design Studio | Department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental Planning, UC Berkeley
2021 | Environmental Planning Studio | Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Florida
2020 | Site Analysis | Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Florida
2015 | Principles and Practices of Irrigation in Florida | Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering, University of Florida
2022 | Marquis, Latimer, & Halback Award for Best Graduate Terminal Project
2022 | Jonathan and Elizabeth Seymour Endowed Scholarship Award for work ethic
2021 | Graduate Olmsted Scholar
Rivera, D., Breder, E., (2024) Fuera SpaceX: Resisting Climate Coloniality Via Terra Nullius within Contested Boca Chica State Park. In Farhana, S. (Ed). Confronting Climate Coloniality. Routledge.
“Port St. Joe Watershed Strategies: Resiliency Plans for Avenue A and Central Channel Basins.” Florida Institute of Built Environment Resilience. Florida Resilient Cities. Jeff Carney, Mike Volk, Bill O’Dell, Christian Calle Figueroa, Eliza Breder, Forough Forourtan. August 2022.
“Stormwater and Landscape: A Green Infrastructure Network to Reduce Stormwater Flooding, Reduce Non-Point Source Pollution, & Enhance Community Open Space” North Port St. Joe Community Workshop. Florida Institute of Built Environment Resilience, University of Florida. School of Architecture and Engineering Technology, Florida A & M University. Volk, M., Deitch, M., Luo, Y., M, Haley., Breder, E. Oct 2021. (30-39).
Cardenas, B., Dukes, M. D., Breder, E., & Torbert, J. W. (2021). Long‐term performance of smart irrigation controllers on single‐family homes with excess irrigation. AWWA Water Science, 3(2), e1218.
“Smart Irrigation Controller Demonstration and Evaluation in Orange County Florida.” Water Research Foundation, Report 4227 (2016). Tolbert, J. W., B. Tolley, T. Thill, L. M. Allen, M. D. Dukes, E. M. Breder, P. F. Monaghan, M. C. Morea, and W. Wells.
