News

 

  • 30 August 2024: CNH-L co-PI, Dr. Fang Qiu, visited Auburn University College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment (CFWE) and delivered an insightful presentation titled “Automatic detection of wildlife animals from UAV thermal imagery using a You-Look-Twice (YLT) deep learning model” to around 20 CFWE colleagues and students in person and more audience via Zoom. Dr. Qiu’s seminar focused on using AI applications like the You-Look-Twice (YLT) deep learning model to detect wildlife in the core zone of the Chitwan National Park (CNP), Nepal. With the help of the YLT model, researchers can detect the presence of wildlife by processing and analyzing drone-captured thermal imagery more accurately. With rigorous labeling, training, validation, and classification processes, the YLT model achieved remarkable accuracy, with detection and species identification rates exceeding 97%. Moreover, Dr. Qiu’s use of the YLT model has significant meanings for the conservation community to conduct further research, as researchers can use this YLT model to better predict the locations of the detected wildlife presence by relating to the vegetation structures and density. Furthermore, the findings can provide policy implications for mitigating human-wildlife conflict, which has been a central issue in the CNH-L projects, as wildlife would prefer less dense vegetation (which may coincide with the characteristics of residential communities outside CNP) due to the lack of food sources and high vegetation density in the over-protected core zone of CNP.
  • 25 August 2024: Ph.D. student Ren went to the Chitwan Valley, Nepal between August 3rd and 19th for a field trip on forest management practices. During the field trip, he visited eight community forest (CF) offices in the Eastern Chitwan Valley and had access to restricted forest areas currently under CF management. He investigated how the community forests in Chitwan were involved in and benefited from a nationwide silvicultural program called the Scientific Forest Management (SciFM). Silviculture is “the art of science” of sustainably managing trees through controlling the growth, quality, and health of trees so that forest owners can benefit from timber production economically while providing ecosystem services. There might be some potential interactions between SciFM and other existing conservation initiatives, such as community forestry and REDD+. Upon receiving a modified IRB protocol from Auburn University, he will work with the Nepali research partner, the Institute for Social and Environmental Research – Nepal (ISER-N), to conduct eight interviews with community forest officers in the Eastern Chitwan Valley about their participation in—and attitudes towards—silvicultural practices. The new forest management interview data will be helpful for comparing household livelihood decisions, child education, and migration choices under different forest management practices in combination with a social survey in the same eight community forests conducted in 2023.
  • 22 July 2024:  Brenna Fowler, M.S. student at San Diego State University, finished her thesis titled “Utilizing ultra-high spatial resolution drone imagery and satellite spectral vegetation indices (SVI) to suited payment for ecosystem services (PES) zones in Chitwan, Nepal.” Congrats!
  • 05 June 2024: In August, Ph.D. student Ren Cao plans to conduct a field trip in the Eastern Chitwan Valley to understand the impact of the Scientific Forest Management (SciFM) program on community livelihoods and the interactions between SciFM and other conservation initiatives. The SciFM program was a silvicultural program aimed at improving timber outputs and forest sustainability implemented between 2014 and 2021. He will work with ISER-N to collect some additional interview data with community forest (CF) officers whose CFs have participated in SciFM before and identify the potential mutual influences between SciFM and other existing conservation initiatives in Chitwan. He has submitted a modification to IRB protocol to both Auburn University and ISER-N for approval.
  • 25 April 2024: At the Center for Applied GIS (CAGIS) and Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographical Sciences of University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), Dr. An gave a lecture “Green the ecosystems at multiple spatial & temporal scales — Complex systems & GIScience approaches” as CAGIS-GeoSAN Distinguished Speaker. As a part of the lecture, he met faculty and students at UNCC, discussing about issues such as trends in coupled human-nature systems research, the usefulness of micro-level 3-D models, and incorporating stakeholders’ feedback in agent-based modeling practice.
  • 03 April 2024: Dr. Li An took his office as the president of IALE-North America during the 2024 annual meeting of IALE-North America, held in Oklahoma City. His term is from 2024 to 2026. Read more here.
  • 20 March 2024: The IRB protocol titled “CNH-L: People, Place, and Payments in a Complex Human-Environment System” has been approved by the Auburn University’s IRB as “Exempt” under federal regulation 45 CFR 46.104(b)(4). Receiving this approval is a necessary step for Dr. Li An to move the CNH-L project from San Diego State University to Auburn University.
  • 11 February 2024: Doctoral student Ren Cao has been selected as a recipient of the “NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award,” which is supported by NASA and Michigan State University (MSU) to assist some outstanding junior scholars in attending the IALE-North America Annual Meeting in Oklahoma City, April 1-5, 2024. He will use the award to travel to Oklahoma City and make a presentation titled “Drivers and motivations of using biogas plants for households in the Western Chitwan Valley, Nepal” at the IALE-North America’s annual meeting on April 4, 2024. Ren’s presentation is based on a research paper he wrote on understanding the drivers of local communities to use biogas as an alternative to biomass-based fuel like firewood under the influence of the buffer zone community forest program in Chitwan Valley, Nepal. Congratulations Ren!
  • 04 January2024: Welcome Dr. Rong Zhang to join the CHES lab as a postdoctoral research fellow! Dr. Zhang received her doctoral degree of ecology from Fudan University, China. Her aeras of interest include remote sensing of environment/land use and land cover change, forest biomass carbon stock/climate change, and mapping/machine learning. She will lead development of an agent-based model using data from Chitwan Valley as part of Dr. Li An’s CNH2 project.
  • 01 January 2024: A paper led by Dr. Li An, titled “Global hidden spillover effects among concurrent green initiatives”, has been accepted for publication in Science of the Total Environment (impact factor 9.8). This paper raises a global issue about the popularity and spillover effects between concurrently implemented green initiatives (conservation programs implemented in the same geographic area(s) or involving the same recipients). A surprising discovery shows that spillover effects were very divergent: one initiative could reduce the gain of another by 22% ~ 100%, representing alarming losses, while in other instances, substantial co-benefits could arise as one initiative can increase the gain of another by 9% ~ 310%.
  • 06 November 2023: The PI Transfer request has been approved by National Science Foundation. Then the project “CNH-L: People, Place, and Payments in Complex Human-Environment System” will be transferred to Auburn University starting from November 06, 2023, under the Award ID 2403830. The total amount of fund transferred to Auburn University is $277,169, including two subawards to University of Texas, Dallas and San Diego State University.
  • 19 August 2023: Welcome Xiaoxiao Wei, PhD student working with Dr. Li An, to join the CHES lab at Auburn University. Xiaoxiao obtained her Master of Landscape Architecture from The University of Oklahoma in 2018. Her research interest is about human-environment interaction and agent-based modeling.
  • 17 August 2023: Dr. Li An joined Auburn University’s College of Forestry, Wildlife, and Environment as Solon & Martha Dixon Endowed Professor of Ecosystem Modeling and the Director of the CHES Lab and International Center for Climate and Global Change Research.
  • 19 May 2023: the first CNH2 project summit takes place at SDSU. The first day of the summit provides opportunities for investigators, students, and collaborators to present their research progress and ideas for future projects and papers. On the second day, members of the CNH2 team will join with 7 high school teachers from San Diego to discuss the possibility of incorporating the Chitwan project findings and methods into their instruction and curriculum.
  • 09 May 2023: My Thu Tran, CNH2 team member and Ph.D. student in Geography at SDSU, travelled to Chitwan, Nepal to visit our collaborators, NTNC and ISER-N, and conduct her field work. My Thu will also help us service the camera traps installed in Chitwan, as some units brought to Nepal by Dr. Bohnett need maintenance after a year. Gook luck My Thu!
  • 01 March 2023: CNH2 team members from the Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Jennifer Glick and Dr. Scott Yabiku, visited our collaborator ISER-N in Chitwan to pre-test a new round of social survey covering energy choice, child education, migration, human-animal relations, and perceptions about Chitwan National Park. The survey was designed and revised in 2022 with the help of team members Li An, Ren Cao, Tracy Liu, Jennifer Glick, and Scott Yabiku. Our team worked with ISER-N to finalize the questionnaire and sampling areas. Congrats!
  • 09 January 2023: CNH2 team members, Dr. Li An, Dr. Douglas Stow, Dr. Fang Qiu, and student Brenna Fowler visited Chitwan during the winter break. They met with local collaborators for ecological and social survey, including the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) for carrying out ecological research and the Institute for Social and Environmental Research – Nepal (ISER-N) for the social survey.
  • 09 August 2022: Ph.D. student Ren Cao visited Pennsylvania State University and met two professors, Dr. Jennifer Glick and Dr. Scott Yabiku, to discuss the progress of designing his social survey questionnaire for the upcoming field work in early 2023. They finalized questionnaire and designed questions that cover energy choice, child education, migration, human-animal relations, and perceptions about Chitwan National Park for the CNH2 project. They also worked on delineating the sampling areas and chose sampling strategy for the social survey.
  • 13 July 2022: CNH2 team members submitted the annual report for the 2021-2022 year to NSF. Highlights for our activities included: establishing a new partnership with the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) for carrying out wildlife research, and strengthening our existing partnership with the Institute for Social and Environmental Research – Nepal (ISER-N) on household-level social surveys, and several field trips by team members to Chitwan, Nepal since December 2021 to collect ecological and social survey data, along with designing survey questionnaire for 2023.
  • 20 May 2022: Dr. Bohnett returned to San Diego after a six-month of field trip in Chitwan! Eve led fieldwork for collecting ecological data using drone and digital cameras; she also started a pilot test for surveying local community forest managers.
  • 17 May 2022: Ren Cao, CNH2 team member and Ph.D. student in Geography at SDSU, travelled to Nepal for fieldwork with collaboration with our local partner, ISER-N. Ren designed a social survey in Eastern Chitwan. This social survey will be conducted in community forest areas in Eastern Chitwan near Dr. Bohnett’s ecological survey sites in February 2023. After Ren’s field trip, he will meet with Drs. An, Glick, and Yabiku to finalize a social survey questionnaire on energy choice, child education, migration, human-animal relations, and perceptions about Chitwan National Park under payments for ecosystem services projects.
  • 20 February 2022: Tracy Liu, CNH2 team member and master student in Geography at SDSU, departed for her two-month field trip on social surveys and interviews about human-animal interactions in Chitwan, Nepal, in collaboration with our local partner, the Institute for Social and Environmental Research – Nepal (ISER-N).
  • 30 December 2021: Dr. Fang Qiu, CNH2 team member and Professor for Geospatial Information Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, departed for Nepal to join the fieldwork led by another CNH2 member Dr. Eve Bohnett. Dr. Qiu will be staying in Nepal for three weeks to operate drone flights for our fieldwork in Chitwan. Good luck Dr. Qiu!
  • 15 December 2021:  First fieldwork trip to Chitwan Valley, Nepal since the start of the global pandemic kicked off! Dr. Eve Bohnett, postdoctoral research fellow in the CNH2 team, embarked on her fieldwork trip to collect camera traps and drone data, an essential part of the ecological component of the CNH2 project. Graduate students Ren Cao and Yanjing (Tracy) Liu helped with Dr. Bohnett during the preparation processes.
  • 10 December 2021: In preparation for fieldwork in Chitwan, Nepal, the CNH2 team had a half-day training on drone use at SDSU. Mr. Don Solleder from Enterprise UAS, Inc. gave a detailed instruction on the appropriate use of the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced Drone. After the workshop, the team members performed a test flight at the SDSU campus to familiarize themselves with the equipment. Dr. Eve Bohnett, CNH2 fieldwork leader, helped to schedule and coordinate the training workshop; Doug Stow, Fang Qiu (via Zoom), Lloyd (Pete) Coulter, Jeff Fleckenstein, and Li An participated in the workshop.
  • 21 July 2020: Dr. Hsiang Ling Chen’s paper “Understanding the direct and indirect effects of Payment for Ecosystem Services on resource use and wildlife”  has been accepted for publication at Anthropocene. This paper is jointed sponsored by this project and our former NSF CNH project. Congratulations Dr. Chen!
  • 17 July 2020:  Our CNH2 team is pleased to announce that Eve T. Bohnett has joined us! Eve is currently a PhD candidate at Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Florida. She is working now as a part-time researcher and will join us as a full-time postdoctoral research fellow once she defends her dissertation in the fall semester. Welcome Eve!
  • 17 December  2019: Dr. Hsiang Ling Chen’ s paper “Assessing the effects of payments for ecosystem services programs on forest structure and species biodiversity” has been accepted for publication at Biodiversity and Conservation. This paper is based on Dr. Chen’s work for our NSF CNH project (2012-2017). Cheers!
  • 22 November 2019: An article “Cascading impacts of payments for ecosystem services in complex human-environment systems” (An et al.) has been accepted for publication. This article builds an agent-based model to study the complex interactions among human livelihoods, payments for ecosystem services, and the Guizhou golden monkey habitat occupancy over 20 years using data from Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve, China (jointly sponsored by our earlier NSF CNH project).
  • 12 November 2019: Two-postdoc fellows are being sought to join an interdisciplinary research team under this project titled “CNH-L: People, Place, and Payments in Complex Human-Environment Systems”. See this page for detailed information about the positions.
  • 10 November 2019: PhD students are being sought to join the newly established PKU-SDSU Complex Human-Environment Systems Center. For more information about the application procedure, see this site.
  • 14 October  2019:  Alexandra (Ali) Yost led a paper titled “Mechanisms behind concurrent payments for ecosystem services in a Chinese nature reserve” and was accepted for publication in a prestigious journal Ecological Economics.  Ali is an M.S. candidate at Department of Geography, San Diego State University (jointly sponsored by our earlier NSF CNH project).
  • 01 September 2018: The National Science Foundation Abstract (#1826839) “CNH-L: People, Place, and Payments in Complex Human-Environment Systems” is awarded to principal investigator Li An and colleagues at San Diego State University, University of Texas at Dallas, and Pennsylvania State University.

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