The DeFries Lab has just had a project funded through the Google Earth Engines Research Award Program on “The Sensitivity of Agricultural Output to Climate Variability Across Smallholder Farms in South Asia” (investigators and collaborators include DeFries Lab alumGillian Galford (Univ. of Vermont), Post-doc Pinki Mondal, recent Ph.D. Graduate Meha Jain and Ruth DeFries.
Megan Cattau, DeFries Lab member and E3B Ph.D. student, has just been awarded (March 20th, 2014) an Exploration Fund grant for her project “Feedbacks between fire and land cover: Changing disturbance dynamics in the peat swamp landscape.” The Explorers Club grants are highly competitive and only a small percentage of the proposals are funded. Congratulations!
Matthew Fagan, Ph.D., DeFries Lab and E3B Ph.D. program alum, has defended his dissertation (Jan. 27, 2014), and will begin his NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship shortly. Beginning April 2014, Matt will be based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Congratulations, Matt!
Miriam Marlier, Ph.D., DeFries Lab and E3B Ph.D. program alum, has successfully defended her dissertation (December 2013), and will be continuing her work with the DeFries’ Lab as a post-doctoral fellow. Congratulations Miriam!
The Times of India has coverage (02/20/2014) of a three-day symposium that was held on the Kanha-Pench Landscape at Mocha, in the Mandla district in Madhya Pradesh, India. The meeting “…was aimed to foster communication, identify research gaps and priorities, and develop a shared vision for science-based conservation in the landscape in central India which is of national and global importance for a substantial proportion of the tiger population along with other endangered species.” The symposium was organized by a team that includes E3B’s own Chair, Ruth DeFries, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Pinki Mondal, and Ph.D. student Meghna Agarwala. Please see link HERE.
Ruth DeFries, delivered the keynote address at an international workshop on ‘Land use optimisation for coordinating regional development with the conservation of endangered species’ in Puducherry, India (Dec. 16th). The amount of land under protection has increased steadily since the 1980s. “The main focus now is to ensure that the areas that come under protection are effectively managed, so that the protection itself is successful.” Please CLICK HERE to see coverage in The Hindu
Megan Cattau, DeFries Lab and E3B Ph.D. student, recently received a grant from the United States-Indonesia Society (USINDO) to support research for the fire probability modeling chapter of her thesis. In this chapter, she will evaluate the causes of large-scale, detrimental peatland fires in Indonesia. Megan is working in Indonesia this year, on her Fulbright.
Ruth DeFries has been teaching a class with fellow E3B Professor Kevin Griffin – Ecological and Social Systems for Sustainable Development. They challenged their students to prepare a “sustainable” meal. Click here to see how things turned out!.
Krithi Karanth, DeFries Lab Alumna, and Ruth DeFries are co-authors on a paper that has been receiving a lot of attention in the Indian press (Sept. 23, 2013). The article, “Living with Wildlife and Mitigating Conflicts Around Three Indian Protected Areas”, published in Environmental Management September 2013 LINKED HERE, with co-authors, Lisa Naughton-Treves and Arjun M. Gopalaswamy, looks at the economic toll that human-wildlife conflict takes on communities living and working near Protected Areas. Interesting coverage appears in The Hindu (please click here), FIRSTPOST.India (here) and The New Indian Express (here).
Meha Jain, E3B doctoral student working with Ruth DeFries and Shahid Naeem, posted a blog and video on the National Geographic site about her work in India — “Indian Farmers Cope With Climate Change and Falling Water Tables”. Meha’s work is sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society as part of the Young Explorer program. Please click here.
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