Currently Proposed Research Projects
NSF Funded Research Proposal -Geography & Regional Science 2004-2006
Tanzania – Uganda
Project funded September 2003. NSF Geography & Regional Science Program. Summer field visit (2005) with Dr. Abe Goldman and Dr. Michael Binford and analysis of data now in progress. Two graduate students are involved in this project: Meredith Evans and Joel Hartter. Database of satellite imagery being established for sharing with other faculty and students at UF and elsewhere. First papers from this project should be forthcoming.
Summary: The establishment and maintenance of protected parks remains the principal mode of purposeful biodiversity conservation in most of the world today. Surrounding those protected areas in the developing world, agriculture is rapidly becoming – if it is not already – the predominant human land use. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa, where economies remain strongly based on agriculture, rates of population growth are among the highest in the world, and the number and land coverage of protected areas continues to increase. As a result, the interactions among protected areas, biodiversity, and agricultural systems will be critical to the future of all three in the surrounding landscapes. Nonetheless, there has been very little research on how protected areas, biodiversity, and agriculture affect each other. Natural scientists have largely assumed that agriculture is incompatible with the preservation of undomesticated biodiversity, and social scientists have generally implied that the establishment of protected areas has overwhelmingly negative impacts on local agricultural and pastoral populations. None of these assumptions has been subject to sufficient scientific research. Moreover, given the great diversity of agriculture in Africa and elsewhere, it is surprising that the question has barely been raised of how the interactions between agriculture and biodiversity vary with different types and intensities of agricultural systems. This research proposes to examine the impacts of national parks in East Africa on agriculture and related livelihood activities in the areas surrounding them, and, in turn, how a range of agricultural systems affect biodiversity outside, and to some extent within, the protected areas. The research will be conducted in regions neighboring two medium-sized parks in Tanzania and Uganda and will examine these interactions at present and over the past 25 years. The sites have been selected because they represent contrasting points in a continuum of agricultural expansion and intensification surrounding such parks, and because the researchers have the benefit of previous social and biological research within and outside these parks. The issues addressed in this proposal have large and growing significance to the interactions between human livelihoods and biodiversity in East Africa and elsewhere.
Research Narrative
