About

Kendra McSweeney is a Professor in the Department of Geography at The Ohio State University. Her primary research interests focus on human-environment interactions, with particular emphasis on cultural and political ecology, conservation and development, resilience, demography, and land use/cover change. Her current projects include tracing the socioecological impacts of drug trafficking through Central America and studying the nature and implications of demographic change among Latin America's indigenous populations. She has made significant contributions to understanding the intersections of drug policy, environmental change, and regional development, and her work often explores the complex dynamics of illicit economies and their environmental and social consequences.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Ecology
• Geography
• Computer Science
• Environmental planning
• Environmental protection
• Forestry
• Law
• Economics
• Environmental resource management
• Industrial organization

Selected publications

• Narcotrafficking Across a Nation: The Juxtaposition of NGOs Work and Illicit Activities Embedding into the Licit Economy in Rural Honduras

  Journal of Illicit Economies and Development · 2026-03-18

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Cocaine trafficking is a significant driver of deforestation and land use change in Central America’s tropical forests. Over the past 18 years, Honduras, situated between cocaine supply regions in South America and major markets in North America and Europe, has experienced significant narcotrafficking activity. This activity has led to rapid land use change as traffickers secure territorial control, launder illicit proceeds, and build transportation infrastructure. Militarized counter narcotic efforts have further dispersed trafficking into remote regions. As one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, Honduras faces socio-economic disparities and slow progress towards the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), exacerbated by the corrupting influence of drug trade on governance state actors implicated in narcotrafficking and illicit extractive activities weaken institutional legitimacy and sustainable development (SD) efforts. In this context, Honduran conservation and SD NGOs play a vital role in addressing governance failures, particularly in conservation. We seek to provide a richer understanding of this phenomena through an examination of NGO experiences with illicitness. The purpose of this paper is to understand: 1) the spatial and temporal extent of narcotrafficking events across Honduras; 2) differences between transit and enduring trafficking activities; 3) how narcotrafficking compares to other illicit extractive activities in challenging NGO efforts; and 4) NGO perceptions of narcotrafficking effects on licit and illicit economies. Findings reveal narcotrafficking’s pervasive influence in NGO operational areas, its link to illicit extractive activities, and embeddedness in licit economies. This research underscores how narcotrafficking undermines Honduran NGOs’ conservation and SD initiatives.

  PublisherDOI

• A convergence research approach to resolving ‘wicked problems’: Lessons from an interdisciplinary research team in land use science

  Applied Geography · 2025-02-20 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Many contemporary social and environmental problems are increasingly ‘wicked.’ Convergence research offers an effective approach to tackle wicked problems by integrating diverse epistemologies, methodologies, and expertise. Yet, there exists little discussion of how to develop and employ a convergence research approach. This article describes our collaborative research efforts to achieve convergence research and team science. For over a decade, we have sought to understand how drug trafficking activities, and the counternarcotics efforts designed to thwart them, catalyze catastrophic changes in landscapes and communities. We first discuss how understanding our wicked problem called for epistemological convergence of diverse data through a team science approach. We then unpack the potential insights and challenges of methodological convergence by drawing upon examples from our land cover and land use change analysis. Third, we argue that the nature of complex, pressing problems requires convergence research to be politically engaged and accountable to the multiple communities affected. This article aims to provide research teams insight into how to pursue epistemological and methodological convergence while attending to the inherent politics of producing knowledge about wicked problems. • Convergence research and team science are effective approaches to study ‘wicked problems’. • The War on Drugs is a ‘wicked problem’ driving deforestation and environmental degradation. • Research convergence requires integrating diverse epistemologies and methodologies. • Data interoperability methods can support epistemological integration. • ‘Wicked problems’ require politically accountable and policy-oriented research. • Key aspects of convergence research and team science occur at each research life cycle step.

  PublisherDOI

• The Challenge of Just Federal Sentencing for “Boat Defendants”

  Federal Sentencing Reporter · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In the U.S. federal criminal justice system, sentencing guidelines for drug-related offenses are pegged to drug type and quantity. This research explores sentencing for a group of federal drug offenders who are found with unusually large quantities of powder cocaine (typically >150 kg): poor, unarmed foreign nationals detained at sea and charged under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act. As an unusual type of drug courier, this boat defendant population offers an instructive window into federal sentencing because the defendants are so “similarly situated,” yet they are prosecuted across multiple federal courts and have been sentenced by hundreds of judges. Using a defendant-level dataset built from publicly available data, the study explores sentencing outcomes across circuits, districts, courthouses, judges, and codefendants before and after the First Step Act (FSA) took effect in December 2018, which granted judges increased discretion to impose sentences below mandatory minimums. Results show that average imposed sentences were markedly lower than the estimated guideline minimums, suggesting that courts are recognizing drug weight to be a poor indicator of culpability, particularly post-FSA. The study also shows stark variation in imposed sentences within and across federal districts and among judges within a common court, which points to the unpredictability of sentencing outcomes despite a highly homogeneous offender population. The authors call for a critical reevaluation of federal drug sentencing guidelines to promote fairness and consistency and call for further research on judicial discretion in driving sentencing disparities.

  PublisherDOI

• Central America’s agro-ecological suitability for cultivating coca, <i>Erythroxylum</i> spp

  Environmental Research Letters · 2024-09-17 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract We assess how much of Central America is likely to be agriculturally suitable for cultivating coca ( Erythroxylum spp), the main ingredient in cocaine. Since 2017, organized criminal groups (not smallholders) have been establishing coca plantations in Central America for cocaine production. This has broken South America’s long monopoly on coca leaf production for the global cocaine trade and raised concerns about future expansion in the isthmus. Yet it is not clear how much of Central America has suitable biophysical characteristics for a crop domesticated in, and long associated with the Andean region. We combine geo-located data from coca cultivation locations in Colombia with reported coca sites in Central America to model the soil, climate, and topography of Central American landscapes that might be suitable for coca production under standard management practices. We find that 47% of northern Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize) has biophysical characteristics that appear highly suitable for coca-growing, while most of southern Central America does not. Biophysical factors, then, are unlikely to constrain coca’s spread in northern Central America. Whether or not the crop is more widely planted will depend on complex and multi-scalar social, economic, and political factors. Among them is whether Central American countries and their allies will continue to prioritize militarized approaches to the drug trade through coca eradication and drug interdiction, which are likely to induce further expansion, not contain it. Novel approaches to the drug trade will be required to avert this outcome.

  PublisherDOI

• Intersection of narco trafficking, enforcement and bird conservation in the Americas

  Nature Sustainability · 2024-06-12 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Complex social challenges such as narco trafficking can have unexpected consequences for biodiversity conservation. Here we show how international counter-drug strategies may increase the risk of narco trafficking, which is associated with deforestation, in two-thirds of the important landscapes for forest birds in Central America. Soberingly, over half of Nearctic-Neotropical migratory species had more than one quarter, and 20% of species had over half, of their global population in areas threatened by narco trafficking, suggesting the need for more holistic strategies to better protect native biodiversity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Towards spatially disaggregated cocaine supply chain modeling

  Socio-Economic Planning Sciences · 2024-10-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Despite the global reach and economic scale of cocaine trafficking, our best geographic understanding of the global trade remains coarse. A more spatially disaggregated understanding of how the cocaine supply chain embeds across multiple locations is necessary for informing security policies and anticipating the spread and intensity of social and environmental harms associated with the cocaine trade. In this research, modeling methods used for legal supply chains are adapted to spatially disaggregate illicit supply chain flows. Profit and supply maximization model versions were compared to elucidate key decision parameters cocaine traffickers might be facing. Cocaine flows to EU+3 (Norway, Turkey, and United Kingdom) markets were estimated based on the smuggling capacity of major Central American ports and bilateral trade volumes of selected commodities most often seized with cocaine shipments. The resulting estimates of cocaine volumes diverted to EU+3 countries from Central America ranged between 938 and 1526 metric tons (MT). Generally, easier concealment and storage in Central America led to less volume supplied to the United States (US) and increased shipments to EU+3 markets. Importantly, the value of this modeling approach is not in the quantitative estimates produced, but in the methodological approach that provides the ability to rigorously ground any quantitative estimates of clandestine phenomenon in the best available data. • Transatlantic cocaine trade is booming but the US is still assumed to be the main destination. • Formalization of cocaine supply chain model tests this assumption. • Cocaine flow estimates made possible by combining diverse, fragmented empirical data. • Cocaine supply to EU+3 countries through Central America could rival that to the US. • Spatially disaggregated modeling provides insights into transatlantic cocaine trade operations.

  PublisherDOI

• A data pedigree system to support geospatial analyses of human-environment interactions in data poor contexts

  International Journal of Geographical Information Systems · 2024-12-18 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Geospatial analyses of human-environment interactions are challenged by the multi-scale, multi-dimensional nature of human-environment systems. Research in such contexts must often rely on integrating multiple, independently produced data sources, which presents heterogenous data qualities and interoperability challenges. Understanding data quality and transparency becomes increasingly important in these contexts, and multi‐granularity and context specific spatial data quality indicators are needed. We develop a data pedigree system that accounts for multiple data quality aspects, geospatial ambiguities that may hinder interoperability, and the fitness-for-use of each data source for indicating causal linkages between human activities and environmental change. We demonstrate its application to a particularly challenging and data sparse case study of identifying the location and timing of transnational cocaine trafficking, or ‘narco-trafficking’, in Central America with five spatial and temporal data quality indicators: geographic clarity, geographic interpretation, provenance, temporal specificity, and narco-trafficking certainty. The proposed data pedigree system provides a systematic and coherent analytical framework for interoperability, comparison, and corroboration of fragmented and incomplete data, which are needed to support advanced geospatial analyses, such as causal inference techniques. The study demonstrates the transferability and operationalization of the data pedigree system for examining complex human-environment interactions, especially those influenced by illicit economies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interventions on public geographies

  Political Geography · 2023-11-22 · 18 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Prohibition geographies: Afterward to special issue on “Illicit geographies and contested environments”

  Political Geography · 2023-01-19 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Generative tensions: Undergraduates' experience of Geography in US universities

  Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers · 2023-06-27 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract We reflect on Geography in the US university by focusing on the paths taken by undergraduates into and beyond our classrooms. Those paths reveal aspects of Geography that appear unique to this national context, and include the structural barriers to US students' entry into Geography, from their highly uneven exposure to Geography in school to their unfamiliarity with it as a university degree. Yet many students still manage to find the field, with the troubling exception of Black and Indigenous students. We also highlight the paradox whereby graduates of this ‘invisible’ field are in high demand within government and industry, even as their training encourages them to simultaneously critique the tight coupling of Geography with those structures of power. We suggest that these are the distinctive and constitutive attributes of Geography in US universities that shape undergraduates and the geographies that they take out into the world.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Zoe Pearson

  Wyoming Department of Education

  14 shared

• Nicholas R. Magliocca

  12 shared

• Erik A. Nielsen

  12 shared

• Steven E. Sesnie

  United States Fish and Wildlife Service

  11 shared

• David Wrathall

  Oregon State University

  11 shared

• Beth Tellman

  7 shared

• Ricardo Godoy

  Brandeis University

  6 shared

• David Wilkie

  Wildlife Conservation Society

  6 shared

Awards & honors

• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),…
• Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa Society, Was…
• American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Elected Fellow, 2023
• Distinguished Scholar Award, Ohio State, 2021
• Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal, American Geographical Soci…