This project involves the research and training of a cultural anthropologist at the University of Kentucky. The funds will allow the researcher to study the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and data from remote sensing to further his research on contemporary ecology and the history of land use in the Guinea savanna climatic zone of western Africa. The overall goal is to provide a theoretical explanation of the sociocultural and historical causes of production problems with an empirical study of local and regional food production, resource exploitation, and ecological change. The data to be dealt with include ethnographic and ecological materials on agriculture and forest ecology, historical data from European traveler accounts as well as African oral traditions, and analysis of aerial photographs and Landsat satellite imagery. This research is important because the investigator will provide an African-centered model of tropical forest dynamics to contrast and compare with the widely cited Amazonian model, to advance our understanding of the human-landscape interactions in this critically important type of ecosystem. In addition the project will increase the nation's technical expertise in combining ethnographic information with GIS and remote sensing data.
