This workship will bring together biologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists engaged in research on etnobiology, together with applied mathematicians, to identify future directions to facilitate growth and maturation on the field. The workshop will be organized in two parts: an initial 3-day workshop of the organizing committee of mid-career leaders in the field, followed by a widely advertised seminar to which attendance will be open. The workshop will attempt to define and focus research objectives; explore modern methodology appropriate for studying plant/animal-people interactions; assess and strengthen techniques for quantitative analyses of multidisciplinary data; develop interdisciplinary education models to train students and practicioners of ethnobiology; and develop strategies to improve access to academic funding sources. International research partners from the International Society of Ethnobiology will attend. The participants will be pledged to apply the insights and collaborative linkages developed in the workshop to preparing competitive proposals in etchnobiology to submit to relevant programs in NSF. The output will be a bulletin defining the intellectual imperatives in ethnobiology, which will be broadly distributed to professional societies, universities, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations.
There are a variety of practical problems that would benefit from a more holistic and theoretically strong ethnobiology discipline. Due to the global nature of the workshop and the involvemente of foreign participants, the impact on research and education could be global in scope.
This project is an award emananting from the FY 2001 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Envionment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.
