Matt Fagan and Ruth DeFries are lead authors on a paper in Environmental Research Letters

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Matt Fagan and Ruth DeFries are lead authors on a paper in Environmental Research Letters “Land cover dynamics following a deforestation ban in northern Costa Rica”. The work assessed whether deforestation for conversion to pasture and cropland decreased in the lowlands of northern Costa Rica following the 1996 ban on forest clearing, despite a tripling of area under pineapple cultivation in the last decade. Results suggest that deforestation bans may protect mature forests better than older forest regrowth and may restrict clearing for large-scale crops more effectively than clearing for pasture. See the paper here.

 

The Council of the Association of American Geographers has appointed E3B Postdoctoral Research Scientist Giovani Graziosi to the International Research and Scholarly Exchange Committee

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The Council of the Association of American Geographers has appointed E3B Postdoctoral Research Scientist Giovani Graziosi to the International Research and Scholarly Exchange Committee for a period of 3 years, 2013-16. The formal charge of this advisory committee is to encourage participation of geographers in interdisciplinary conferences and in meetings dealing with international issues.

Meha Jain has been awarded a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.

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Meha Jain, E3B Ph.D. student, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant. Her thesis is entitled, The Impacts of Farmer Adaptation to Climate Variability on Groundwater Salinity and Soil Health in Gujarat, India

 

Ruth DeFries and colleagues have work featured in The Phil Trans B issue

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Ruth DeFries, and colleagues, including Maria Uriarte, E3B Professor and DGS, Marcia Macedo, DeFries Lab Alum, have work featured in The Phil Trans B issue on ‘Ecology, economy, and management of an agro-industrial frontier landscape in the southeast Amazon. Please click here to see more. Mongabay, a popular environmental science and conservation news site, has a interesting bit of coverage. Please click here

Mapping cropping intensity of smallholder farms: A comparison of methods using multiple sensors

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Meha Jain, Pinki Mondal, Ruth S. DeFries, Christopher Small, and Gillian L. Galford, (former DeFries lab Post-doctoral fellow) have a new paper. “Mapping cropping intensity of smallholder farms: A comparison of methods using multiple sensors” Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 134, July 2013, Pages 210–223 please click here

Megan Cattau, is co-author on a paper on lions in Mozambique Jacobson

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Megan Cattau, is co-author on a paper on lions in Mozambique Jacobson, A. P., Cattau, M. E., Riggio, J. S., Petracca, L.S., and Fedak, D. A. 2013. Distribution and abundance of lions in northwest Tete Province, Mozambique. Tropical Conservation Science Vol. 6(1):87-107. Click here to read more.

Ruth DeFries and Maria Uriarte are two of the authors on a paper selected by Nature Geoscience

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Ruth DeFries and Maria Uriarte are two of the authors on a paper selected by Nature Geoscience as one of their “ten favorite papers” in a web focus that celebrates the fifth anniversary of the journal linked here “Deforestation driven by urban population growth and agricultural trade in the twenty-first century” by Ruth S. DeFries, Thomas Rudel, Maria Uriarte & Matthew Hansen

Ruth DeFries and Victor Gutierrez-Velez were part of an interdisciplinary team at Columbia University’s Earth Institute

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Ruth DeFries and Victor Gutierrez-Velez were part of an interdisciplinary team at Columbia University’s Earth Institute that published a paper “Depopulation of rural landscapes exacerbates fire activity in the western Amazon” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author of the paper is María Uriarte. Please see the Earth Institute’s link HERE. The other authors of the study are Miguel Pinedo-Vaquez, also of Columbia’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology; Katia Fernandes and Walter Baethgen, from Columbia’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society; and Christine Padoch, of the New York Botanical Garden. Padoch and Pinedo-Vaquez are also associated with the Center for International Forestry Research. Additional international press attention can be read HERE ClimateWire and here Natureza el Globo and here UOL news and here Huffington Post

Tien Ming Lee has co-authored a paper in American Naturalist

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Tien Ming Lee has co-authored a paper in American Naturalist entitled “Positive Relationships between Association Strength and Phenotypic Similarity Characterize the Assembly of Mixed-Species Bird Flocks Worldwide”. The findings highlight “the need to consider positive interactions along with competition when seeking to explain community assembly” Please see the link to the paper HERE

Paper accepted for publication in PLoSentitled

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Ruth DeFries and Krithi Karanth have had a paper accepted for publication in PLoSentitled “Assessing Patterns of Human-Wildlife Conflicts and Compensation Around a Central Indian Protected Area”