Research
Community-based natural
resource management
Subsistence hunting is critically important for the food security and cultural identity of many people throughout the tropical world, particularly Indigenous groups, but is also a major threat to wildlife conservation and potential source of zoonotic disease. Indigenous reserves, where Indigenous groups seek to preserve cultural identity and traditional subsistence strategies while simultaneously conserving biodiversity, now comprise over 20% of the Amazon and are the largest category of protected areas throughout the tropics.
These reserves are highly effective for conserving biodiversity and preventing degradation of ecosystem services valuable to human health and disease prevention. However, Indigenous peoples in tropical forests face both internal and external challenges in natural resource management, including illegal territorial incursions, climate change, changing technology, increased incorporation into the cash economy, and increasing human population densities.
In my research, I collaborate with the Waiwai to co-create methods for natural resource co-management that are commensurate with Indigenous worldviews. An essential aspect of this work is integrating qualitative ethnographic methods with quantitative spatial analysis. For example, we developed a participatory GIS that allows the Waiwai to manage their subsistence hunting in a sustainable way while simultaneously ensuring long-term food security. I am also working with community members to use GPS data, satellite imagery, and drone-based aerial mapping for territorial defense of their protected area.
Human dimensions of
socio-ecological systems
A major focus of my research is understanding the influence of human activity, particularly traditional subsistence strategies and ecological knowledge, in shaping tropical forest socio-ecological systems. Many parts of the Amazon that were once thought of as "pristine" and untouched by humans, are now recognized as highly anthropogenic habitats, with wildlife and pathogen communities shaped for millennia through human activities.
I integrate spatial modeling and remote sensing with ethnographic data to understand how the local ecological knowledge, social institutions, and cultural practices of Amazonian communities influence wildlife community ecology and mitigate the emergence of zoonotic diseases.
Movement and community ecology of nonhuman primates
My work also focuses on spatial and agent-based modeling of community and movement ecology of non-human primates at a field site I established with Conservation International called the Upper Essequibo Conservation Concession (UECC) in Guyana. I apply mathematical and spatially explicit modeling in this research to understand the feeding ecology, fission-fusion dynamics, multi-species associations, and movement ecology of primates.
I am particularly interested in how spatial tools can help us better understand fundamental questions in primate behavioral ecology and I have helped introduce methods that have become widely used in primatology.
My contributions in this area include a Cambridge University Press volume focused on applied spatial analysis in field primatology that I co-edited and contributed several chapters. I am also collaborating with colleagues and community members in Guyana and Suriname in conducting a Guiana Shield-wide survey of primate community structure. The ultimate aim of this work is to develop habitat distribution models and species survival plans for two vulnerable species, Guianan bearded saki monkeys (Chiropotes sagulatus) and black spider monkeys (Ateles paniscus).