Tamara Ticktin: Ethnoecology and Conservation Lab

Interests

We are broadly interested in understanding the ways in which local use and stewardship of tropical forests can foster biological and biocultural conservation and restoration; and in understanding the multiple interacting drivers of plant population persistence or decline. Ninety percent of the world’s tropical forests lie outside of protected areas and most are used, valued and cared for by the people who live in and around them. We employ a combination of ecological monitoring and field experiments, demographic modeling, and interviews with local resource users. Our focus in on biocultural and participatory approaches. 

Specific areas of interest:

Local and indigenous stewardship of forests, including ecology of wild-harvested resources, agroforestry systems, and biocultural conservation and restoration; natural and anthropogenic drivers of plant population dynamics; epiphyte demography and conservation; resilience of social-ecological systems, especially land-sea and ecological-nutritional linkages.

Local and indigenous resource management practices - especially harvest of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and indigenous agroforestry systems - and their implications for biological and biocultural conservation and restoration. We study local and indigenous resource stewardship systems and their effects on plant populations, communities and  interactions among plants, animals and people. Our work has demonstrated how and why many of these systems are sustainable, and the ways in which biological and cultural diversity are often interlinked. 

Plant demography and conservation: identifying the effects of multiple drivers on the dynamics and viability of plant populations.  We have been assessing how a range of key anthropogenic drivers, including harvest, fire, grazing, invasive species, and climate change affect plant populations at risk.  Using matrix population modeling and integral projection modeling, our work has illustrated the ways in which these drivers may interact, and why disentangling their effects is critical for effective conservation.

Global environmental change and resilience in social-ecological systems.  Tackling conservation problems effectively requires a multidisciplinary approach. We are collaborating with marine biologists, environmental economists, cultural anthropologists, resource managers and cultural practitioners to identify drivers of resilience in Pacific Island communities in the context of climate change. We use a ridge-to-reef approach to identify local stewardship use practices that enhance conservation and social-ecological resilience.  Our work has illustrated the complex interactions between and among ecological and social drivers of resilience, and some of the trade-offs between conservation values and ecosystem services.

Population ecology and conservation of Native Hawaiian plants We are using long-term datasets to study the drivers of persistence and decline in a range Native Hawaiian plant species, including common foundational trees of mesic forests, and threatened and endangered species of the dry and mesic forests. In Hawaii island dryforests, we are carrying out collaborative research to identify the success of restoration of threatened and endangered species.