Doctoral Dissertation Research: Harvesting Practices, Ecosystem Degradation, and Artifical Selection of Economically Viable Forest Resources

本博士论文研究项目将侧重于森林资源采伐实践与资源质量和可得性变化之间的复杂相互作用，这可能导致资源采伐方式的变化。该项目将重点关注通过砍伐果树来破坏性采伐果树的影响，这种做法是通过破坏野生林分上的雌性果树导致总体人口下降和性别比例失衡。该项目将分析树木退化的程度和分布，以及它们所占据的生态系统，并将确定采伐行为是否构成一种人工选择过程，有利于经济上较差的果实性状。该项目将评估新的遥感技术在分析土地覆盖退化方面的潜在价值，从而提高更一般的环境监测能力。它将为基于收获的人工选择对未充分利用作物的作用提供新的见解，这将扩展这一一般主题的知识，超越目前对捕鱼和狩猎的关注，并增强对自然资源管理、民族植物学和历史生态学的一般理解。项目结果将为研究区域和许多其他地方的保护和发展提供新的见解，包括美国的资源开采实践正在重新考虑，以确定经济和环境可持续的做法。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。承担该项目的博士生将把注意力集中在毛里求斯棕榈的收获上，这对秘鲁亚马逊地区的居民具有重要的经济和营养意义。该研究将集中在两个研究问题上：(1)毛里求斯棕榈沼泽因不可持续的采伐而退化的程度和分布是什么？(2)这些采掘压力是否导致了毛里求斯弯曲藻的人工选择？该学生假设资源和生态系统退化的空间分布可以由年际归一化植被指数（NDVI）持续下降决定。随着种群数量因过度捕捞而减少，预计NDVI也会相应下降。空间统计数据将用于绘制退化热点，并通过实地调查验证结果。该学生还假设，生态系统退化正在减少毛里求斯弯曲藻理想表型的频率。将分析这些性状的表达与退化水平之间的关系，以确定破坏性收获是否通过人工选择过程塑造了表型表达。

This doctoral dissertation research project will focus on the complex interactions between harvesting practices of forest resources and changes in the quality and availability of the resource, which may engender changes to the ways in which the resource is harvested. The project will focus on the impact of destructive harvesting of a fruit-bearing tree by felling the tree, a practice through which the destruction of female fruit-bearing trees from wild stands has led to overall population declines and unbalanced sex ratios. The project will analyze the extent and distribution of the degradation of trees and the ecosystem they occupy, and it will determine whether harvesting practices constitute an artificial selection process that favors economically inferior fruit traits. The project will assess the potential value of new remote sensing techniques for the analysis of land-cover degradation, thereby improving more general capabilities for environmental monitoring. It will provide new insights into the role of harvest-based artificial selection on underutilized crops, which will expand knowledge of this general topic beyond its current focus on fishing and hunting and enhance general understanding of natural resource management, ethnobotany, and historical ecology. Project findings will provide new insights regarding conservation and development in the study area and in many other locales, including those in the U.S., where resource extraction practices are being reconsidered in order to identify economically and environmentally sustainable practices. 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.The doctoral student undertaking this project will focus his attention on the harvesting of Mauritia flexuosa (Mauritia palm), which is economically and nutritionally important to residents of the Peruvian Amazon. The study will focus on TWO research questions: (1) What is the extent and distribution of Mauritia palm swamp degradation from unsustainable harvesting? (2) Do these extractive pressures lead to an artificial selection in Mauritia flexuosa? The student hypothesizes that the spatial distribution of resource and ecosystem degradation can be determined by the persistence of declines in the interannual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). As populations decline from overharvesting, a correlating drop in NDVI is expected. Spatial statistics will be used to map hotspots of degradation, and the results will be verified through field surveys. The student also hypothesizes that ecosystem degradation is decreasing the frequency of desirable phenotypes in Mauritia flexuosa. The relationship between the expression of these traits and the level of degradation will be analyzed to ascertain whether destructive harvest practices are shaping phenotypic expression through a process of artificial selection.