top of page
20240517_134550.jpg

Current Research Projects

What guides our work

We are a force for joy. Our research, at the intersection of human wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and justice, is aimed at understanding and facilitating joyful relationships between humans and their environment. Specifically, we seek to understand

  1. how human wellbeing changes with global environmental change and adaptation, particularly for rural and environmentally dependent communities

  2. how to best integrate diverse data to holistically understand complex socio-environmental systems

  3. how equity and justice intersect with environmental change, human wellbeing, and efforts to adapt to change

Data Integration for Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems

Understanding invisible socio-environmental systems through pesticide exposure across human-wildlife interactions

disesimages.jpg

Given ongoing changes to global climate, farmers must adapt livelihoods to deal with the changes in the timing of crop cycles, reduced crop productivity, and more and/or different pests. To cope with this, farmers have increased pesticide use to reduce crop loss. The spread of pesticides presents a new set of problems for agroecosystems that are adjacent to protected areas (PAs) which aim to conserve biodiversity. In Uganda, a country faced with increased pests, climate change, and food security challenges, we study how environmental (e.g., rainfall variability, forest cover, pest pressure) and human drivers (e.g., socioeconomics, perceived pest pressure, pesticide availability) interact to influence human and wildlife well-being. 

Climate Variability and
Land System Dynamics of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area

chobe.PNG

This project aims to facilitate a broader understanding of how livelihoods, land use and its history, and the environment are changing in the Kavango-Zambezi region of southern Africa. Combining household surveys, remote sensing of vegetation and land use, and innovative modeling, the key leverage points identified will help craft interventions to mitigate different sources of household vulnerability. ​Our team has developed a conceptual model of how adaptive capacity, exposure to climate variability, and sensitivity to changes in land use might combine to affect household vulnerability. Learn more about the results of this project from publications on wildlife impacts, food security, or our novel mapping methodology, or through an ArcGIS Story Map.

bottom of page