PROJECTS

In the Ethiopian highlands, climate change and soil degradation are increasingly dire threats to smallholder farmer livelihood security. Soil and water conservation practices are potential potent strategies for ensuring sustainable farming livelihoods. Using household econometric surveys and land-use change data derived from high-resolution imagery, we conducted a matching-based analysis to investigate how participation in soil and water conservation farmer trainings impacts agricultural practices and livelihoods, and predicts land-use intensification patterns. The article was published in Land Use Policy.

Kibale National Park in western Uganda is prized for primate biodiversity, ecosystem services, and tourism revenue. Forest use by people living around the park is highly criminalized, but evidence – family histories, found artifacts, and archives – indicates that the forest was inhabited until the 1930s, when villagers were expelled to establish a forest reserve. I collaborated with primatologists Aaron Sandel and Sam Angedakin, and local research staff Godfrey Mbabazi and James Tibisimwa to study forest regeneration in sites throughout the forest where villages and homesteads once existed. The first article of this collaboration was published in Human Ecology.

I worked as a research associate with P.I.s Arun Agrawal and Dan Brown on a project assessing the impacts of large changes in land-tenure in Ethiopia and Tanzania. In the last 15-20 years, the governments of Ethiopia and Tanzania have opened up land to foreign investment, creating a "land-rush". As agricultural commodity producers purchase huge tracts of land, what are the impacts on forest cover and livelihood security among smallholder farmers, pastoralists and forest dwellers? I used high-resolution satellite data to create a dataset of land-use/land-cover change around transacted areas, and advised on household survey collection. An article from this project has been published in Ecology and Society.

As a Master's student at the University of Michigan, I worked with ADHENO Integrated Rural Development Association in Debre Berhan, Ethiopia, to assess the impacts of their smallholder farmer training and reforestation programs. We spent 2.5 months in Ethiopia working with NGO staff to frame an evaluation, coordinating enumeration of 500 household surveys, and collecting ecological data. We spent another eight months analyzing the data to produced an evaluation report. Find the final report here.

In Cerro de Pasco, a town in the Peruvian Andes, the heavy metals mine is the main driver of the economy. The town's elevation is too high to farm, and the landscape can scarcely support livestock. People working in, and living around the mine are exposed to lead levels far above US EPA-recommended limits. How are blood lead levels influenced by exposure to soil lead, and how does this impact epigenetic expression? I have contributed a kriging regression analysis to model the relationship between soil and blood lead levels to this project led by Ainash Childebayeva, an epigeneticist at the University of Michigan. The article was published in Environment International.