Achievement

IGERT faculty Stephen Walsh submitted a proposal entitled “Social & Ecological Sustainability of Protected Areas and Island Ecosystems of the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador” to NSF-PIRE during the reporting period. Walsh, and collaborators in the social, natural, spatial, and computational sciences, propose to develop a new “Island Biocomplexity,” one capable of understanding integrated natural-human systems and the challenges to their sustainability. The proposed project takes advantage of UNC’s strong partnership with the University of San Francisco Quito (USFQ) through the development of the Galapagos Initiative, a broad research, education, and community outreach program in the Galapagos Islands. The project team includes a range of scientists from both institutions, as well as scholars at other institutions in the U.S., primary data collectors in Ecuador, and principal stewards of the Galapagos Archipelago of Ecuador.