1. IFRI Activities at Indiana University
Catherine Tucker - Anthropology
(tuckerc@indiana.edu)
October 2013

2. Overview
Recent, Current and Projected Activities
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Training
Research and projected papers using the database
Graduate student dissertations using the database
Possible collaborations incorporating IFRI (subject to
funding)

3. Training
• Most recent IFRI training at IU: Fall 2011
– 13 trainees, 7 IU grads & 6 international/visiting scholars
• Next training: TBA
• 4 of 6 long term study sites in Indiana remain viable
for future research

4. IFRI Related Research
Mountain Research
Initiative
• – Research Coordination Network proposal to the NSF
– Integration of modeling approaches for coupled humannatural systems in contexts of climatic and social-political
change in mountain areas
– How can science be more effective in communicating
findings to non-scientists making management and policy
decisions?
– North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia
– ~16 researchers + research centers

5. IFRI- Related Research –
Adaptation to Climate Change
and Market Volatility among
Coffee Farmers
• Coffee growing regions in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and
Costa Rica
• Implications for livelihoods, vulnerability and land cover
change in Mesoamerica’s forests and coffee regions
• General Question: How are coffee farmers adapting to climate
change and market volatility? What are implications for
livelihoods, collective action and land cover-land use?
• Current question: Are environmental certifications providing
observable benefits for the environment and coffee growers?

6. Global Forest Institutions, Policies and
Governance Project
• New collaboration with IFRI trained researchers –
– Forest Fleischman, Graham Epstein, Michael Cox, Gustavo
Garcia-Lopez, Sergio Villamayor, Michael Schoon
– Aim to understand relationships between macro level
policies and micro level forest outcomes
• How do trade liberalization policies interact with
national laws to influence forest outcomes?
– Initial focus: Impacts of CAFTA on forest policy and
management in Central America

7. Recent Papers Using IFRI Data
• G. Epstein, J. Vogt, M. Cox, & L. Shimek. “Confronting
problems of method in the study of sustainability” Under
review, Forest Policy & Economics.
• S. Nath. “Leadership and Socio-ecological Outcomes in IFRI
Forests,” presented at IASC 2013, Japan
• S. Jensen, B. Plale, X. Liu, M. Chen, D. Leake, J. England.
“Generalized Representation and Mapping for SocialEcological Data: Freeing Data from the Database,” 8th IEEE
International Conference on eScience (eScience 2012),
Chicago, IL, October 2012

8. IFRI-Related Papers (continued)
• S. Jensen, M. Chen, X. Liu, B. Plale & D. Leake. “Mining
Classifications from Social-Ecological Databases
(extended abstract and poster), 75th Annual Meeting of
the American Society for Information Science and
Technology (ASIS&T), Baltimore, MD, October 2012.
• M. Chen, U. Pavalanathan, S. Jensen, & B. Plale.
“Modeling Heterogeneous Data Resources for SocialEcological Research: A Data-Centric Perspective,
ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries,
Indianapolis, IN, July 2013.