WRi has entered into a Joint Venture Agreement with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Misoula funded by the US Forest Service on the project “Traditional phenological knowledge: Mapping support for case study descriptions of cultural resilience in fire-adapted ecosystems”. The project will last 12 months from June 2013 to June 2104 with $71,000 allocated to WRi. A Research Associate, Fernando Sanchez Trigueros, has been appointed to provide technical expertise in setting up a MapMe survey and handling the statistical and spatial analysis of the survey results.
The purpose of this proposed basic science project is to generate a comprehensive literature synthesis and facilitate self-study among representatives from natural sciences and social sciences programs from several tribal colleges in the Rocky Mountain Region.The project will contribute to the better understanding the role of cultural resilience in fire adapted ecosystems planning. The environmental focus will be broad, with resilience to changes in natural systems the emphasis; the social focus will be on threats to traditional knowledge associated with changing influences on fire adapted landscapes. Social vulnerability assessments to guide public lands conservation planning are needed for identifying social values at risk, metrics to measure vulnerability, and to provide tools to describe anticipated outcomes associated with environmental change projections.