2018 SRE Project
The Spatial Interactions between Hunting and Plant Gathering in Tropical Forests
Participants:
Eeman Abbasi, Mount Holyoke College
Kevin De Angeli, Texas A&M Univ. Kingsville
Alan Gan, Mathematics, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville
Mentors:
Dr. Charlotte Chang, NIMBioS Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Xingli Giam, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Univ. of Tennessee
Project Description. Globally, wildlife are overharvested for bushmeat and the pet trade in biodiverse tropical forests, which presents a major conservation challenge. How harvesters decide which patches of habitat to target is a major knowledge gap that limits the design of wildlife protection policies. The distribution of harvesting pressure across space may be dictated not only by animals but also by plant products, such as medicinal herbs, rattan, and other important goods. Using modeling, this project seeks to explore how exploitation pressure would change across a landscape under different conditions, such as the spatial and temporal distribution of plant and animal resources, as well as travel costs for hunters.
NIMBioS
1122 Volunteer Blvd., Suite 106
University of Tennessee
Knoxville,
TN 37996-3410
PH: (865) 974-9334
FAX: (865) 974-9461
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