HSD: Understanding Dynamic Resource-Management Systems and Land-Cover Transitions in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia

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Contemporary concerns about climate change, global environmental change, and sustainability have rejuvenated interest in the development of an integrative theory of human-environment relationships. Montane mainland Southeast Asia is a region of great biological and cultural diversity that has come under close scrutiny in the last several decades as a result of both real and perceived deforestation, land degradation, and most recently, the conversion of traditional agricultural practices to more permanent cash crop agriculture driven by regional and global markets. This interdisciplinary research project will examine how resource management systems in montane mainland Southeast Asia are changing in the wake of commodification of resources in order to appreciate how these changes may affect sustainable resource use, landscape transformation, and land cover. A multidisciplinary team from the social and biological sciences will collect economic, demographic, institutional and cultural data in China, Laos, and Thailand and link these data with a multi-temporal high-resolution spatial database. These data will be analyzed to develop a narrative of land-cover and land-use change in the study area. The investigators will use cellular-automata and agent-based modeling to explore changes in social and biophysical variables and enhance insights beyond the available empirical data.The project will enhance basic knowledge regarding the dynamic coupling between human societies and their ecosystems at scales that range from the local to district, national, and global. The project will further understanding of the roles of spatial information technology and modeling for understanding long-term processes of ecological restoration and land-use transition. The project will seek to further understanding of land-use change as part of the coupled human-environment system. The project will facilitate collaborations between U.S. and Asian scholars. The project will provide grad student field-base research opportunities, and it will permit numerous different ethnic groups found in montane mainland Southeast Asia to examine the social implications of land-cover and land-use change for these groups, and it will facilitate decision making by policy makers and stakeholders at local, regional, and national levels. An experienced and diverse multidisciplinary team including economists, foresters, geographers, and sociologists brings a broad range of skills to this project. The project will facilitate interactions among social and natural scientists examining the complex interaction among human and natural systems. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2004 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD). Coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards involves all NSF directorates and offices.