US-East Africa Workshop on Interdisciplinary Science for Integrated Assessment of Socioeconomic and Biophysical Processes in East Africa; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, February, 2006

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Pell 0543004Understanding of the complex interactions between people and their environment is essential for sustainable environmental, economic and agricultural management. This award supports a 4-day workshop for American, Ethiopian, Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan scientists on how to integrate data from the social and natural sciences and across different temporal, spatial and organizational scales. Recently, there has been strong emphasis on the desirability of interdisciplinary research, but there has been less focus on how it should be done. This workshop will permit a group of African and U.S. scientists with experience doing interdisciplinary research to share and evaluate their experiences. The American participants will include scientists and students who have been working in East Africa on two projects funded by NSF's Biocomplexity and the Environment initiative. The workshop's goal is to develop recommended practices for data collection, analysis and interpretation that will permit use of data from the farm, field and household to predict what is happening at landscape, regional, national and international levels. This workshop will include a diverse group of participants including graduate students, post doctoral fellows and senior scientists from universities in the U.S. and East Africa. Beyond exploring how to conduct interdisciplinary research and getting better understanding of the relationships between poverty and environmental degradation, we expect that this workshop will foster new collaborations between African and American scientists and within East Africa itself.