Prof. Ian Baird (Geography), Prof. Annemarie Schneider (Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies) and other collaborators have received a $750,000 grant award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for their project, Forest, agricultural, and urban transitions in Mainland Southeast Asia: Synthesizing knowledge and developing theory.

The project is designed to enhance the conceptual underpinnings of land change science by integrating aspects of land teleconnections, land use transitions, and political ecology to explicitly link land changes in SE Asia to local, national, and international drivers. The work will study transitions in forests, boom crops, and periurban areas using remote sensing imagery, socioeconomic data, focus group discussions and surveys designed to harness local knowledge.

Schneider’s work for the project is focused on peri-urban changes in Vietnam while Baird’s focus is on rural uplands regions of Laos and Cambodia.