Post date: Mar 17, 2016 1:25:27 AM
National Science Foundation Geography and Spatial Science (GSS): Change and Adaptation in Southern Africa: Climate and Land Systems Dynamics of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. PIs: Andrea Gaughan (U of Lousiville), Narcisa G. Pricope (UNCW), Forrest Stevens (U Louisville) and Joel Hartter (UC Boulder). May 2016 – May 2019.
Description: This research project will investigate the associations between vulnerability, natural resource use, and climate variability in Southern Africa. The primary outcomes of this work will be a quantitative assessment of how climate, institutions, and land-use affect household and community vulnerability, and identify potential leverage points where changes in adaptive capacity will reduce vulnerability. This interdisciplinary study will expand knowledge of how feedbacks from human-environment interactions affect vulnerability in a region characterized by increasing environmental uncertainty. Project findings will also advance the study of land systems, especially in dryland environments. In addition, there will be an explicit focus on educational and research capacity building in the study region, fostering collaboration between US and African institutions and providing a strong foundation for interdisciplinary education and training of American and African undergraduate and graduate students. Ultimately the work will promote locally-based collaborative ties with national and international partners to address issues of land and resource stewardship, and will have a direct bearing on human wellbeing. To understand the relationship between vulnerability, resource use and climate variability, this research adapts a framework with three main components: exposure to environmental and climatic change, the degree of sensitivity to which a system is susceptible to these exposure components, and adaptive capacity which is a system’s ability to adjust, modify, or change its characteristics in response to shocks or stress. The investigators will use this framework together with analyses of climate variability and land cover change across the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area in Southern Africa. The region is the largest internationally-managed, terrestrial conservation area in the world. By examining interactions among climate variability, resource use, and household vulnerability, this study will determine if, and at what spatial scale land-use decisions are best detected on the landscape. The main goals are to: 1) identify socio-ecological conditions and patterns that affect household and community vulnerability as conceptualized by the combination of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, and 2) determine leverage points in that framework that might mitigate how land-use decisions and land-cover change affect vulnerability. To achieve these goals, the investigators will combine household surveys and participatory mapping to characterize how indicators of vulnerability relate to land use and reliance on natural resources with interlinking factors shaping smallholders' land-use decisions.