Rebecca Bliege Bird
I am a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Penn State. I am also faculty in the Ecology Graduate Program, and participate in two dual title PhD programs, Climate Science and TREES (Transdisciplinary Research in Environment and Society). Some of the projects I'm currently working on are described below.
Wesern Desert Environmental Histories
When Martu people were nomadic (in the 1950's), where did fire mosaics build up? Are fires randomly distributed at the landscape scale or are they clustered in regions with high habitat suitability?
Movement ecology
How does habitat patchiness influence fine grained landscape use during hunting bouts? Do people move less in anthropogenic landscapes?
Plant presence and abundance as indicators of indigenous seed dispersal
Are certain plants more abundant and or more likely to be present near places where people spend more time and are more active in shaping fire regimes?
Plant genetics
Is the landscape patterning in Solanum diversiflorum genetic diversity reflective of a long history of human seed transport and dispersal? Are populations more genetically similar than we would expect given their geographic distance?