Scholars Awards for Methodological Training in Land Use Changes in West Africa

该项目涉及肯塔基州大学一名文化人类学家的研究和培训。 这些资金将使研究人员能够研究地理信息系统和遥感数据的使用，以进一步研究西非几内亚热带草原气候带的当代生态学和土地使用史。 总体目标是提供一个生产问题的社会文化和历史原因的理论解释与当地和区域的粮食生产，资源开发和生态变化的实证研究。所要处理的数据包括关于农业和森林生态的人种学和生态学材料、来自欧洲旅行者记录的历史数据以及非洲的口述传统，以及对航空照片和大地卫星图像的分析。 这项研究很重要，因为研究人员将提供一个以非洲为中心的热带森林动态模型，与广泛引用的亚马逊模型进行对比和比较，以促进我们对这一至关重要的生态系统类型中人类与景观相互作用的理解。 此外，该项目还将提高该国在将人种学信息与地理信息系统和遥感数据相结合方面的技术专门知识。

This project involves the research and training of a cultural anthropologist at the University of Kentucky. The funds will allow the researcher to study the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data from remote sensing to further his research on contemporary ecology and the history of land use in the Guinea savanna climatic zone of western Africa. The overall goal is to provide a theoretical explanation of the sociocultural and historical causes of production problems with an empirical study of local and regional food production, resource exploitation, and ecological change. The data to be dealt with include ethnographic and ecological materials on agriculture and forest ecology, historical data from European traveler accounts as well as African oral traditions, and analysis of aerial photographs and Landsat satellite imagery. This research is important because the investigator will provide an African-centered model of tropical forest dynamics to contrast and compare with the widely cited Amazonian model, to advance our understanding of the human-landscape interactions in this critically important type of ecosystem. In addition the project will increase the nation's technical expertise in combining ethnographic information with GIS and remote sensing data.