Liberia has the most forest cover of any West African country, and these forests have sustained indigenous societies for millennia. Today, Liberia’s forested landscapes face a future that holds both great promise and peril. The sustainability challenges arise at the…
Multi-species ethnography is a valuable qualitative methodology for revealing the mutual, iterative influences of animals, plants and people on one another, as each responds to environmental change. Through these entanglements, we can track how trajectories of adaptation unfold. This study…
With support from a USDA-NIFA Developing Pathways internship, Carlie Blackburn — a recent graduate from the College of Coastal Georgia — spent the summer of 2023 on Jekyll Island, conducting an innovative monitoring study of a large sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia sericea)…
BIO-CULTURAL CONSERVATION ON THE COAST! We are starting a new project, funded by NOAA and Georgia Sea Grant, investigating sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia sericea) and other plant species of cultural and ecological importance to Gullah Geechee people and Georgia’s maritime ecosystems. The…
This synthesis of trends in livelihood adaptation in a Kenyan pastoralist community focused on two themes, which interact to influence governance of common pool resources: (1) the broader phenomenon of commodity frontiers, and (2) social cohesion within communities. Gabriele Volpato,…
When households practicing small-scale livelihoods such as pastoralism experience increasing hardships due to environmental change, adopting a new livelihood strategy is often promoted as a way to regain food security and reduce vulnerability. However, livelihood adaptation is a complex process,…
Understanding the past, present, and future fate of forests on Georgia’s barrier islands is motivating a lot of work in our lab these days…. Together with Warnell faculty colleagues Nate Nibbelink and Clint Moore, we received 4 years of funding…
King, E., Cavender-Bares, J., Balvanera, P., Mwampamba, T. H., & Polasky, S. (2015). Trade-offs in ecosystem services and varying stakeholder preferences: evaluating conflicts, obstacles, and opportunities. Ecology and Society, 20(3). doi: 10.5751/ES-07822-200325 (open access) This paper, just published in Ecology…
Dr. Eric MacDonald of the College of Environment & Design at UGA is shepherding this student-run initiative that uses prescribed grazing to control invasive species, reclaim forgotten natural areas on campus, and foster environmental stewardship in students. The goats, or the…
Drylands cover 40% of the continent of Africa, and are the basis for traditional pastoralist social-ecological systems, in which societies have adapted to rely heavily or entirely on livestock production for their livelihoods in harsh and variable environments. Modernity has…