Dissertation Research: Understanding Pastoral Land Use in East Africa - An Interdisciplinary Approach

这篇论文是由加州大学戴维斯分校的一名文化人类学专业的学生完成的，研究的是坦桑尼亚牧民的土地利用。学生将结合个人决策和文化生态研究的视角，量化不同限制因素对牧民家庭土地利用的影响。构建基于个体的放牧强度空间模型。以个人为基础的模型的优点是，它捕捉到在家庭一级确定的可变性，并将这一信息纳入土地利用的景观规模模式的特征。木本植物和草本植物将通过放牧强度的梯度进行采样，并将监测使用不同放牧强度地区的牛群的生产力。植被数据将显示资源的可获得性，生产力的测量将解决依赖密度的反馈是否影响畜牧业生产。这一研究将有助于对牧地利用实践中个体差异的相对罕见的分析，并将推进牧地利用制约因素的定量研究。通过整合家庭决策、土地利用的聚合模式和生态结果，拟议的研究将提供牧场土地利用系统动态变化的更完整的图景。这项研究还有助于培养一位年轻的社会科学家，并促进我们对世界这一重要地区的了解。

This dissertation research project by a cultural anthropology student at the University of California-Davis studies land use of pastoral households in Tanzania. The student will combine perspectives from studies of individual decision making and cultural ecology to quantify the effects of different constraints on land use within pastoral households. An individual-based spatial model of grazing intensity will be constructed. The advantage of an individual-based model is that it captures the variability identified at the household level and incorporates this information in characterizing landscape scale patterns of land use. Woody and herbaceous vegetation will be sampled across a gradient of grazing intensity, and the productivity of herds using areas with different grazing intensities will be monitored. Vegetation data will show resource availability and measures of productivity will address whether density dependent feedback affect pastoral production. This research will contribute a relatively rare analysis of individual variability in pastoral land use practices, and will advance the quantitative study of constraints on pastoral land use. By integrating household decisions, aggregated patterns of land use, and ecological outcomes, the proposed research will provide a more complete picture of the dynamics pastoral land use systems. The research also benefits the training of a young social scientist and advances our knowledge of this important region of the world.