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Interdisciplinary skills and knowledge are required to address issues related to the use and conservation of tropical forests that do not enjoy protected-area status (“working forests”). This IGERT builds on strengths at the University of Florida to construct a cutting-edge program that will serve as a model for… more »

Interdisciplinary skills and knowledge are required to address issues related to the use and conservation of tropical forests that do not enjoy protected-area status (“working forests”). This IGERT builds on strengths at the University of Florida to construct a cutting-edge program that will serve as a model for how doctoral research and training can effectively and ethically contribute to solving critical problems facing tropical working forests. The research goals are to (1) analyze tradeoffs and complementarities among working forest options; (2) clarify how biophysical, social, economic and political constraints and their interactions influence the effectiveness of different kinds of working forests for conservation and development; and (3) measure the impacts of capacity-building interventions designed to improve forest management and promote conservation.

The methods will be integrative across a wide range of disciplines and explicitly comparative across four tropical forest regions (Lowland Bolivia; Acre, Brazil; Eastern Amazonia, Brazil; and the tri-national Maya Forest). The training program includes (1) cross-disciplinary requirements, consisting of courses in ecology and social science, history/culture of the research regions, and appropriate language proficiency; (2) integrative coursework, including Interdisciplinary Research Methods, Leadership and Communication Skills, Tropical Conservation and Development and Land-Use/Land-Cover Analysis, a Working Forests Clinic, and a Working Forests of the Tropics seminar and field course; and (3) complementary learning/teaching opportunities, including site visits within the four regions, annual conferences, retreats and workshops, an IGERT student group, internships, service as mentors, and sharing research results with stakeholders. This IGERT will (1) foster research that is more responsive to real world problems due to interdisciplinary training and strong partner linkages; (2) provide a better match between knowledge and skills developed by graduates and job market demands; and (3) develop a network of effective leaders, trained for the challenges of conservation and intensified use of tropical working forests.

IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the fifth year of the program, awards are being made to twenty-one institutions for programs that collectively span the areas of science and engineering supported by NSF. « less