A Brief History of my Research Efforts

My current research interests focus on the interaction between human land use and biodiversity.

I am actively involved in two research projects on land use and biodiversity in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State and in the Cibao Valley and Cordillera Septentrional (Northern Coastal Mountain Range) in the Dominican Republic. 

My research interests are an outgrowth of my previous work in Kenya between 1983 and 1989 on ecological dimensions of agrarian landscapes and agroforestry production systems. I have completed a summary of the case study research as a contribution to a forthcoming book on human dimensions of environmental change in Kenya. In the summer of 1996 I continued this line of work within a study of biodiversity on farmlands in Cotui, Dominican Republic, with one article published and others in progress.

I am a co-PI on a research project on biodiversity, land use and landscape ecology in the forests of the Adirondacks, funded by the USDA Forest Service. Research in the Adirondacks was initiated in the summer of 1999 and continued in 2000 and 2001. A draft research report, with data analysis, has been filed with the USDA Forest Service and I am currently writing an article for Northeastern Naturalist with one undergraduate and graduate student, and a forest ecologist at the USDA Aiken Forest Laboratory.  We will also link the herpetological results to the forest management practices and subsequent changes in vegetation over a five-year period.

I am also a co-PI on a similar study in the city of Santiago in the Dominican Republic.

This past summer I also initiated fieldwork in Santiago by co-directing a team of students in a multi-taxa pilot study of biodiversity in a peri-urban subtropical landscape. The long-term goals of this effort is to develop research and planning methods for monitoring and maintenance of biodiversity and watershed functions in densely settled and intensively utilized agricultural and forested landscapes.

For an example of my research and undergraduate supervision see the “Active Learning” web page at Clark University.