Doctoral Dissertation Research: Global Localism at Manaslu Conservation Area in the Eastern Himalayas, Nepal: Integrating Knowledges about Community Forests

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Most conservation approaches are extra-locally derived yet they influence local livelihoods and rely on local actions for effective outcomes. Global localism is proposed as a research approach that substantiates the crucial need to first learn about local places and validate local people's perspectives on their livelihood resources before proposing and implementing global conservation agendas. This study investigates scientific-ecological and local ethnobotanical knowledge about landscapes, forest community types, and important plant species populations as an important contribution toward adaptive collaborative management at the Manaslu Conservation Area (MCA) of Nepal. Three questions are proposed: (1) how does the local participatory "ethnoecological" mapping of landscape resources contribute to "landscape ecological" mapping of heterogeneity in the distribution of land cover types; (2) how do the composition and structure of community forest patches (ecological diversity) compare and relate to locally recognized plant resources (ethnobotanical diversity); and (3) what is the population structure and ecological status of highly valued plant species (cultural keystone species) in the study region? Remote sensing images, semi-structured interviews, participatory maps, and ecological samples will be compiled from six Gurung ethnic villages within MCA at different elevations. Locally derived landscape knowledge is hypothesized to contribute toward a joint mapping of diversity patterns that better defines resource areas of symbolic and material value. Ecological and ethnobotanical measures of richness and relative importances will document woody plant diversity patterns among forest community types and predict resource use patterns and human-resource relations. The research focuses on forest resources and their role in local peoples' lives and better predicts the potential for local communities to restore and/or extract plant resources sustainably based on their assessment of resource values and resource accessibility. These data are of immediate relevance for further conservation and management of the remaining forested areas to both the local people and the conservation institutes who are keen on either implementing nationally or globally derived conservation agendas in specific geographic locations. The study employs mixed methodologies (remote sensing, participatory maps, ecological samples, ethnobotanical survey, and calculation of use values) toward understanding ecological and cultural biogeographic patterns of diversity, with a focus on the composition and structure of montane "community" forests on the lower slopes of the Eastern Himalayas. The emphasis is on joint learning, gaining consensus among participants, and a test of relationships between ecological and ethnobotanical patterns of diversity. The study will validate and apply traditional knowledge toward an ecological analysis of diversity patterns that should promote an interactive natural resource management agenda which is sensitive to both human livelihoods and biodiversity conservation via participation among stakeholders and continuous integration and adaption of feedback in response to new learning and management outcomes. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. This project is jointly supported by the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.