A Spatial-Historical Analysis of Agricultural and Protected Land

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的，并得到SBE文化人类学计划的支持。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在西北大学马克·豪泽博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一名早期职业科学家对农业和受保护土地进行空间历史分析。通过对过去75年生物多样性热点地区的景观变化的调查，这项研究产生了关于1)以保护为标志的地区不平等的出现和影响，以及2)人们在土地和森林使用决策中对保护的反应方式的知识。随着经济困难和土地短缺的加剧，人类对森林的压力很可能会增加。这项研究让我们了解了导致人类和森林生活困难的更广泛的趋势，这些知识可以改善美国目前支持保护和发展的努力。此外，该项目还涉及来自STEM代表性不足群体的研究人员和本科生研究助理。该项目描绘了家庭通过主要可用农业手段不再有足够的土地来满足其基本需求的现象。具体地说，它使用从测量考古学借用的技术来记录材料记录，包括基于GPS的横断面行走、航空摄影和档案研究。该项目以人种学调查结果为基础，绘制保护区边界沿线的人口密度、土地保有权和土地利用(作物种植)模式。该项目使用这些方法来确定保护区的建立、人口增长、关于土地的决定和社会经济不平等之间的联系。此外，这项研究还制作了地图，作为人种学、档案研究、严谨的社会理论和保护科学的洞察力之间的桥梁。自然资源管理的人文维度是环境科学中一个不断发展的子领域，这个项目正好符合这一跨学科的努力。然而，尽管环保科学家几十年来一直认识到社会研究的重要性，但试图产生关于人与环境关系的知识，成功地整合生态和社会理解，仍面临障碍。该项目直接致力于通过多学科的协同合作来克服这些障碍。它提供了对影响人民和受保护森林繁荣的更广泛的政治生态趋势的整体理解。因此，该项目通过在理论、方法和传播阶段为语言、社会文化、考古和生态合作创造途径，促进保护和自然资源方面的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and supported by SBE's Cultural Anthropology program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Mark Hauser at Northwestern University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist conducting a spatial-historical analysis of agricultural and protected lands. Through an investigation of landscape changes in a biodiversity hotspot over the last 75 years, this research generates knowledge about 1) the emergence and effects of inequalities in areas marked by conservation and 2) the ways people respond to conservation in their decisions about land and forest use. As economic hardship and land shortages worsen, it is likely that human pressures on the forest will increase. The research offers an understanding of the broader trends that make life difficult for both people and the forest, which is knowledge that can improve current U.S. efforts to support conservation and development. In addition, this project involves researchers and undergraduate research assistants from underrepresented groups in STEM.The project maps the phenomenon by which families no longer have enough land to provide for their basic needs through the largely agricultural means available to them. Specifically, it documents the material record using techniques borrowed from survey archaeology, including GPS-based transect walks; aerial photography, and archival research. The project builds on ethnographic findings to map patterns of population density, land tenure, and land use (crop planting) along the borders of the protected area. The project uses these methods to identify the connections among the establishment of protected areas, population growth, decisions about land, and socio-economic inequality. Moreover, this research produces maps that serve as a bridge between insights from ethnography, archival research, rigorous social theory, and the conservation sciences. Human dimensions of natural resource management is a growing subfield in the environmental sciences, and this project fits squarely into that interdisciplinary endeavor. While conservation scientists have recognized the importance of social research for decades, however, attempts to generate knowledge about human-environment relationships that successfully integrate ecological and social understandings continue to encounter hurdles. This project directly works to overcome those hurdles through a synergistic, multidisciplinary collaboration. It offers a holistic understanding of the broader political-ecological trends shaping prosperity of both the people and the protected forest. The project thus advances knowledge on conservation and natural resources by creating avenues for linguistic, sociocultural, archaeological, and ecological collaboration at the theoretical, methodological, and dissemination stages.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.