HR: 13:30h
AN: ED23A-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Anthropology and Geosciences: Training and Collaboration Advancing Interdisciplinary Research of Human-environment Interaction
AU: * Brondizio, E
EM: ebrondiz@indiana.edu
AF: Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT), University Department of Anthropology Student Building # 130 701 Indiana University Department of Anthropology Student Building # 130 Kirkwood Ave, Bloomington, IN 47405-7100 United States
AU: * Brondizio, E
EM: ebrondiz@indiana.edu
AF: Center for the Study of Institutions, Populations, and Environmental Change (CIPEC, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405-7100 United States
AU: Moran, E
EM: moran@indiana.edu
AF: Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT), University Department of Anthropology Student Building # 130 701 Indiana University Department of Anthropology Student Building # 130 Kirkwood Ave, Bloomington, IN 47405-7100 United States
AB: Over the past thirteen years the Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT) at Indiana University has pioneered the use of anthropological and environmental research approaches to address issues of land use change, and population-environment interaction, particularly in the Amazon. Our research and training objectives focus on how particular local populations manage resources and how those activities may be studied by integrating time-tested ethnographic methods, survey instruments, ecological field studies, and the spatial and temporal perspectives of remote sensing and Geographical Information Systems. The globalization of the environment crisis bears the risk of the research and training at universities being purely global or large scale in nature. This would fail to take into account the highly variable local causes of human activities or to discover sustainable solutions to the use, conservation, and restoration of human ecosystems. Our approach combines institutional and international collaboration, formal and hands-on laboratory and field activities developed within an interdisciplinary environment, but based on the strength of disciplinary programs. Over the past years, we have particularly emphasized collaboration between American and Brazilian scholars and students and intense work with local farmers and communities both during data collection and field research, as well as in returning data and results using different formats. In this paper, we address our experience, the challenges and advantages of theoretical and methodological development for students approaching interdisciplinary problems, innovations in linking levels of analysis, and new opportunities for international and collaborative training and research on human-environment interaction.
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly