Outreach and Education
May 19-20, 2023
The CHN-2 project hosted its third educational workshop and first in-person team project summit in May 2023. The project team members and San Diego educators gathered over a 2-day period to disseminate models and findings, propose paper ideas, and host formal presentations and discussions. The summit was held in San Diego State University’s (SDSU) Geography Department and arranged by the CHN-2 team. The objectives of this event were to fulfill the project goals: produce novel and innovative paper ideas, to facilitate and encourage collaboration, and to construct a highly developed and standards-based curricular unit for instruction.
Day one consisted of multiple meetings and presentations in which the CHN-2 team presented their research progress and ideas for future projects and papers. The morning started off with an upper-level discussion between only the primary investigators (PIs) that involved the status and big-picture ideas for the project.
The afternoon then began small group discussions of paper concepts and investigations led by the post-doc and graduate student researchers. To kick it off, Dr. Eve Bohnett led a captivating discussion on three varying paper topics that were a mixture of social-science and ecological study during her five-month stay in Chitwan in 2022. Eve has been a vital team member of the project since 2019 and has piloted the field work component using uncrewed aerial systems (UAS). Paper one was a methodological study that tests the effectiveness of thermal-infrared (TIR)-UAS for wildlife surveys using different approaches of image collection. Paper two comprised of human wildlife conflicts (HWC) and the experimentation of TIR-UAS tools to assist in tracking man-eating tigers, wild elephants, and rhinos. The third, and final, paper she is working on is of participatory mapping of Community Forest User Groups (CFUG). This paper is a dissemination of the social surveys conducted in spring 2022 on community forest finance and the perceptions of sustainability.
The second talk was led by SDSU master’s student, Brenna Fowler, who joined the NSF team in the fall of 2022. She was a part of the previous winter field trip to Nepal with the three PIs: Dr. Li An, Dr. Fang Qiu, and her advisor, Dr. Douglas Stow. Her work focuses on land use and land cover as an ecological metric for PES programs and forest structure’s influence on animal occupancy. Her paper is her thesis research which is a comparative analysis of vegetation composition metrics of UAS-collected and satellite-collected imagery datasets.
The third discussion was led by Ren Cao, a student of the joint-doctoral program between SDSU and UCSB . His research specialization is on human-nature conflicts for natural resources. Ren’s first paper investigates the perceptions of using alternative energy sources (biogas vs firewood) through social surveys he conducted at Chitwan in the spring of 2022. The study is designed for community forest users group members and the surrounding community whom are reliant on forestry resources. His second paper uses network analysis to examine natural resource management activities throughout community forests and the national park.
The fourth and final talk was led by Haitao Lyu, a doctoral student at UT Dallas under Dr. Fang Qiu. His work centers on machine learning and object detection of wildlife using TIR-UAS imagery. His paper is on reducing redundancy in deer detection using object detection based on distance thresholds. His rigorous development of the deep learning model employs a Feature Pyramid Network (FPN). Day 1 was a successful exchange of ideas, discussions on the technical aspects of each paper, and chiefly, the team was able to engage in professional and friendly discourse.
Day 2 comprised of broad-level overviews by all of the PIs, in-depth presentations by post-docs and graduate students, and a final brainstorming session with participating teachers. The objectives of the day were for project team members to show their ongoing research and to have a back and forth discussion about how to incorporate the project findings and methods into the teacher’s instruction and curriculum. Although the group of teachers was only 7 individuals, it encompassed a diverse range of grade levels and subject areas. In the audience were librarians, K-12 educators, college campus liaisons, and collaborating staff of educational institutions.
Dr. Rebecca Lewison and Dr. Li An opened the day on the project background, what PES programs are, the conceptual framework for the research, and connecting the overall picture to real life examples. This then opened up the room for a discussion between everyone: personal stories and reflections on what these concepts mean, and how they relate to the students and schools that the teachers are a part of. Dr. Fang Qiu then launched into the exciting world of remote sensing, wildlife monitoring, and artificial intelligence. A fruitful exchange and multitude of questions ensued on the meaning behind using AI: a consensus was made that it can simplify our mundane tasks yet can never completely replace the people behind the software. Dr. Scott Yabiku gave a simplified and effectual presentation on social science and how to ask the right questions in a survey. Some of the concepts were linked to tangible topics like political party questionnaire. Dr. Douglas Stow introduced more remote sensing applications but this time breaking down the utility of different bands in the electromagnetic spectrum, the absorptive qualities of vegetation, and the powerful indicators of spectral indices. His talk gave a streamlined introduction to Brenna Fowler’s presentation on vegetation composition and structure.
Fortunately, there was a returning teacher, Ruth, that gave a short talk on the ways in which she was able to apply the learnings from the former Golden Monkey NSF project. She outlined how to engage her students in various learning activities for the observing teachers, some of which were innovative and STEM-directed. The subject content covered areas of biology, math, and computer science for various ages and learning abilities. An example she gave was using an open-source coding package in Python to create a phone application centered around the endangered Golden Monkeys. One consideration in her teaching this curriculum was that younger age groups (elementary school) showed more engagement to conservation and endangered species concern. She concluded her guidance for the teachers to design lesson plans that have: a centralized issue, a purpose, and something they can create like a deliverable.
Following Ruth’s presentation were the post-doc and doctoral students’ descriptions of their paper ideas: Haitao’s research on machine learning object detection; Dr. Eve Bohnett’s on the TIR-UAS for animal tracking and participatory mapping on CF finance; and Ren Cao’s research on social surveys surrounding sustainable energy sources.
To conclude the workshop, teachers were given a breakout time to brainstorm ideas on how to use the information presented in the PowerPoints by all the speakers. Their focus revolved around conservation and sustainability and how to engage the students in these topics. Some great ideas of how to illustrate and assimilate the NSF project work were: curating and fundraising garden clubs; performing skits on forest-resource collection, public-service announcement (PSA)-style; using virtual reality (VR) to make students feel immersed in 360 videos of Nepal; being little wildlife scientists “tracking” their pets; building their own machine learning tool– “Find the Man-Eating Tiger”; and having components that can highlight differences in lifestyles between students’ lives in US and in Nepal (energy consumption, waste management, etc.). Materials from the previous lesson plans and PowerPoint slides from the workshop were shared with instructors to use for their curriculum development. In all, the teachers and CHN-2 team engaged in a productive, fun-filled, and interesting day sharing and learning from each other.
February 18, 2021
A special issue titled "Understanding complex human-environment systems: theoretical and application issues" is ongoing to advance complex human-environment science. Human-environment systems are adaptive and complex. They are highly interrelated through impact and feedback loops with nonlinear, reciprocal and emergent properties across multiple organizational, spatial, and temporal scales. Understanding the complexities and dynamics of the human and environmental systems is crucial to sound environmental policy making for sustainable development. Traditional studies mainly focus on either human or environmental systems, which have serious limitations in revealing their complex interrelations. The recent development of science and technology, particularly data acquisition and computational capacity, has made significant contribution to new theory development and methodological innovation, which allows us to explore the complex systems as well as conduct site specific empirical investigations. This special collection will include papers that focuses on most recent advancements in theory and application in understanding complex human-environment systems. Specifically, we seek research work on the following topics:
- The formulation and development of generalizable theories (e.g., complex systems theory, sustainability science) that explain the dynamics of complex human-environment systems in a given place or telecoupling of human-environmental systems across space.
- Theories regarding the mechanisms and pathways that cross the human and environmental systems or cross different human-environmental systems through telecoupling are of high interest for this special issue.
- Impacts of environmental policies on the dynamics of the human-environmental systems, particularly the mechanisms and pathways that strengthen or weaken the anticipated environmental policy effects or surprise effects in the human-environmental systems.
- Practical applications of human-environment interactions theories based on innovative platforms, such as remote sensing, GIS, agent-based modeling, big data, machine learning/artificial intelligence to understand the dynamics of specific human-environmental systems, including, but not limited to, human-environmental system's structure and functions changes and the implications to its sustainability, influence of disturbance (e.g., human and natural hazards) on system's behavior.
January 29, 2021
IALE-North America mentorship program is being underway. Dr. Li An is coordinating the IALE-North America's mentoring program. This program seeks to pair professional landscape ecologists with undergraduate and graduate students with career goals possibly related to landscape ecology at its annual meeting. The goal of our mentoring program is to engage students in early preparation of their career paths, advise and nurture future landscape ecologists, and build a sustainable landscape ecology community. We encourage landscape ecologists or professionals with experience/expertise in landscape ecology or related domains to serve as mentors; we encourage students—especially those from groups historically excluded from landscape ecology and/or its scientific conferences—to apply for the program as mentees. Here is the site for a quick registration and survey as a mentor; this site is for a potential mentee. If you have questions, please contact Sophie, Caitlin, and Li at ialenamentorship@gmail.com with “IALE-NA mentorship questions” in your email subject.
January 18, 2020
Taihangshan National Nature Reserve (TNNR) at Henan Province of China will be our study site for the NSF CNH2 project "CNH-L: People, Place, and Payments in Complex Human-Environment Systems". Dr. Li An had a trip to TNNR during January 9-17, 2020.
November 27, 2019
SDSU President de la Torre, Director of SDSU Sponsored Research Contracting and Compliance Sandra M. Nordahl, and Dean of College of Urban and Environmental Sciences (Peking University) Dr. Canfei He have signed a Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Complex Human-Environment Systems Center between San Diego State University (SDSU), San Diego State University Research Foundation, and College of Urban and Environmental Sciences (CUES) at Peking University (PKU). This MOU was also approved by California State University Chancellor's office. Learn more about this event.
March 06, 2019
The "Complex Human-Environment Systems (CHES) Center" has been approved by SDSU Deans Council on March. CHES is an international research hub for integrating complex systems theory and human-environment science. The CHES Center is jointly sponsored by San Diego State University (operated by College of Arts and Letters) and Peking University (operated by College of Urban and Environmental Sciences or CUES). In the near future, this CHES will be intrumental to Dr. Li An's newly established $1.45 million grant.
August 22, 2016
Our NSF project team has teamed up with a group of highly-productive local K-12 teachers, in order to use the data, models, and other related information from this project to teach relevant concepts (conservation, coupled natural and human systems, ecosystem services) and principles to students of a variety of age levels and subject areas. See more at this site.
March 25 - April 8, 2016
Two spring scholars, Michael Cassidy and Inka Cresswell (SDSU undergraduate students), went to the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve (FNNR) in China with funding from Dr. An’s NSF project and SDSU President Leadership Fund (PLF). They experienced all aspects of an international field trip, from camera trapping of monkey behavior, to vegetation sampling, to land use mapping, to a different culture, to new food style … They first worked with Dr. Hsiang Ling Chen for camera deployment and vegetation data collection, then they joined Shuang Yang's household survey at several local villages. View the project blog, Inka's project report, and Michael's project report for more details.
March 5, 2015
By the invitation of Dr. Heejun Chang, Dr. Li An went to Portland State University and presented his research as part of their Winter 2015 Ecosystem Services Seminar sponsored by an NSF IGERT award. More
September 11, 2013
Dr. Li An and Shuang Yang attended the annual Campanile Foundation Board Dinner and presented the poster "The Clock Is Ticking for the Golden Monkeys. More
2013 Summer Workshop
2013 Summer workshop for high school teachers in San Diego.
Research-Education-Outreach Partnership
A Research-Education-Outreach Partnership (REO Partnership hereunder) has been maintained since 2007 between Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve (FNNR) for the endangered Guizhou Golden monkey (Rhinopithecus brelichi), San Diego State University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences. The activities under this partnership include:
The College of Arts and Letters at SDSU and Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve renewed the agreement for the REO Partnership in October 2016 (here the English and Chinese versions).
FNNR delegation's visit of SDSU in Fall 2015.
FNNR delegation's visit of SDSU in Spring 2014.
FNNR delegation's visit of SDSU in Spring 2013.
FNNR delegation's visit of SDSU in Winter 2011.
The College of Arts and Letters at SDSU and Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve signed an agreement for the REO Partnership in August 2010 (here the English and Chinese versions).
Drs. Aikten, An, Riley and Tan's visit of FNNR in 2009 summer (invited and paid by FNNR's grant from China's Bureau of Foreign Experts; 3 weeks. Three students, Amanda Sheries and Sarah Wandersee from SDSU and a student from Italy, joined the trip. Sarah Wandersee's visit to FNNR from January to March 2010 was part of dissertation data collection.
This partnership has caused considerable attention. The 360 Magazine (SDSU's official magazine) and the SDSU Website (as the headline news with a color photo) reported our work after a few interviews.
Dr. An's visit of FNNR in 2008 summer (3 weeks).
Drs. An, Riley, and Tan's visit of FNNR in 2008 spring (2 weeks).
Dr. An's visit of FNNR in 2007 summer (3 weeks).