I am involved as PI co-PI on several grants. Notable among these are an NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Human-Environment Research in Marine Ecosystems Award comparing human adaptations to and impacts on marine systems in Moorea (French Polynesia) and Santa Barbara (CA), an NSF Geography and Regional Science Grant on migration and environmental change in Guatemala, and a National Institutes of Health K01 Award. I am co-PI on an NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) project on urbanization, biofuels, and LUCC, and a National Institutes of Health Small Research Grant, R03 on human health and environmental change in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I remain actively engaged in further funding with proposals pending to several sources, including NIH, NASA, and NSF.
I intend my research to continue to explore human-environment interactions where the stakes in sustainable development are unusually high for both environmental integrity and human development. Specifically, I will continue researching population and human health links to natural systems, focusing on rapidly shifting dynamics in regional and international migration, fertility, mortality and morbidity, and the relations of these to socio-economic and political processes across local, national and world regional scales. Much of my work will continue to explore the outcomes of such interactions on tropical LUCC and human wellbeing in Latin America.
Building on enduring and recent collaborations, I shall continue to broaden the thematic and geographical scope of my research. Recent interdisciplinary synergies with great promise include work with colleagues at UCSB and internationally. I am particularly eager to further develop collaborations with colleagues in UCSB Geography on famine detection and prevention in Africa and Latin America, and transportation dynamics in the US. Across campus I look forward to scaling-up recent synergies with Marine Science incorporating human impacts and adaptations to marine ecosystems in the Santa Barbara and Moorea NSF LTER sites.
Domestically and internationally, I am eager to continue developing ongoing investigations with colleagues at Johns Hopkins School of Health and the Carolina Population Center on disease, health, and LUCC in the Amazon rainforest, at Columbia and the University of Puerto Rico on biofuels, urbanization, and LUCC in Latin America, and at World Wildlife Fund on population, health and conservation in ecological “hot spots” in Asia and Africa.
Methodologically, I plan to continue to compliment my strengths in survey design, demographic indicators, multi-level statistical modeling, and mixed methods approaches to expand my integration of spatial modeling, remote sensing, and GIS applications in collaboration with colleagues at UCSB and elsewhere.