Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EARNEST (Examining the Agroforestry Landscape Resilience in India to inform Social-Ecological Sustainability in the Tropics)
Reporting period: 2018-09-01 to 2020-05-31
The effective management of human-dominated tropical forest landscapes is crucial in the wake of global environmental change affecting biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and the livelihoods of billions. To ensure success of such ecological management, it is essential that both planning as well as implementation is informed by long-term ecological knowledge rooted in robust scientific inquiries. Examples of science-based ecological management in tropics are rare largely due to paucity of high-resolution past ecological studies that provide policy-relevant information on timescales tangible for management frameworks. To bridge this gap in the light of India’s National Agroforestry Policy (NAP) and its wider relevance to other tropical countries, EARNEST brought state-of-the-art understanding of Indian agroforestry landscapes using a combined palaeoecological and statistical approach. Assessing the resilience of these landscapes towards past fire regimes under changing climatic scenarios, EARNEST examined their capacity to improve biodiversity and ecosystem functions, vital to socio-economic development of forest-dependent communities in India. To explore its applicability to other parts of the tropics, EARNEST used the model system, the Western Ghats of India, one of world’s prime biodiversity hotspots supporting highest human population density. Additionally, the Western Ghats forested landscapes, like many tropical regions, include community-based conservation refugia for many forest-dwelling species in the form of “sacred” forest groves, small forest fragments that receive protection from deforestation and fire management due to cultural practices. Thus, the age-old agroforestry landscapes and their co-existence with forest groves in this biodiversity hotspot provide an ideal opportunity to investigate their long-term dynamics under changing human and climatic scenarios and to assess their ability to sustain biodiversity in the light of NAP. The major research objectives that drove the project were:
I) Examining long-term transformations of tropical agroforestry landscapes of the Western Ghats
II) Assessing the importance of forest groves as cultural drivers of reforestation
III) Understanding the interplay between agroforestry landscapes and forest groves and its implications for ecological management in light of NAP
While deepening fundamental knowledge of agroforestry landscapes, EARNEST tackled a crucial aspect of the effectiveness of fires in managing these landscapes and generated new knowledge required for designing effective biodiversity conservation strategies, setting the stage for other policy-oriented outcomes. Considering the typical tropical ecological makeup of the Western Ghats rainforests, the ecological and theoretical frameworks that are covered in EARNEST (e.g. plant diversity indices, assessment of indigenous conservation strategies, resilience frameworks), could find regional as well as global analogues, thereby contributing to socio-economic well-being of developing countries in the tropics.
I) Examining long-term transformations of tropical agroforestry landscapes of the Western Ghats
II) Assessing the importance of forest groves as cultural drivers of reforestation
III) Understanding the interplay between agroforestry landscapes and forest groves and its implications for ecological management in light of NAP
While deepening fundamental knowledge of agroforestry landscapes, EARNEST tackled a crucial aspect of the effectiveness of fires in managing these landscapes and generated new knowledge required for designing effective biodiversity conservation strategies, setting the stage for other policy-oriented outcomes. Considering the typical tropical ecological makeup of the Western Ghats rainforests, the ecological and theoretical frameworks that are covered in EARNEST (e.g. plant diversity indices, assessment of indigenous conservation strategies, resilience frameworks), could find regional as well as global analogues, thereby contributing to socio-economic well-being of developing countries in the tropics.
Data generation in EARNEST includes –
1) Recalibration of existing pollen datasets for all the four cores (2 agroforest, 2 sacred forest groves) from the Western Ghats based on the revised chronology available from the previous work
2) High-resolution (1-cm interval) macrocharcoal analyses of the Agroforest 1 (150 cm = 4000 years) and Agroforest-2 (205 cm = 2500 years)
3) Rarefaction-based plant diversity indices (pollen richness-evenness) and temporal β-diversity (compositional turnover) using the recalibrated pollen datasets from all the four cores
4) Regional monsoon (JJAS) rainfall modelling at 20-yr resolution using a Community Climate System Model-based PaleoView
As proposed, EARNEST generated the first-ever trajectories of plant diversity patterns from the Western Ghats-India and explored the relationship among plant diversity, forest change, human-induced fires, and periods of dryness (low monsoon rainfall) over the past four millennia. The findings show that the impacts of anthropogenic fires and aridity on plant diversity in the Western Ghats are complex across time. Bringing both negative and positive analogues from the past, EARNEST identified that fire management on limited and local scales is not detrimental to plant diversity in the Western Ghats. This empirical knowledge is able to provide pragmatic solutions for effective fire management in the region. Additionally, a strong correlation between forest cover and plant diversity visible in the Western Ghats through time emphasises the crucial role of maintenance of trees for conservation in this human-dominated biodiversity hotspot.
Research findings in EARNEST are relevant to palaeoecologists, ecologists, ecosystem modellers, environmental consultants, policymakers and implementers. A variety of dissemination and knowledge sharing actions were planned and successfully implemented in Europe and India, which include –
Four research seminars
Four conference presentations and two workshop participation
One research publication under consideration; two others in preparation
Two public seminars
Four public writings
Active Twitter presence throughout the course of Project @mscaearnest, here: https://twitter.com/mscaearnest?lang=en
1) Recalibration of existing pollen datasets for all the four cores (2 agroforest, 2 sacred forest groves) from the Western Ghats based on the revised chronology available from the previous work
2) High-resolution (1-cm interval) macrocharcoal analyses of the Agroforest 1 (150 cm = 4000 years) and Agroforest-2 (205 cm = 2500 years)
3) Rarefaction-based plant diversity indices (pollen richness-evenness) and temporal β-diversity (compositional turnover) using the recalibrated pollen datasets from all the four cores
4) Regional monsoon (JJAS) rainfall modelling at 20-yr resolution using a Community Climate System Model-based PaleoView
As proposed, EARNEST generated the first-ever trajectories of plant diversity patterns from the Western Ghats-India and explored the relationship among plant diversity, forest change, human-induced fires, and periods of dryness (low monsoon rainfall) over the past four millennia. The findings show that the impacts of anthropogenic fires and aridity on plant diversity in the Western Ghats are complex across time. Bringing both negative and positive analogues from the past, EARNEST identified that fire management on limited and local scales is not detrimental to plant diversity in the Western Ghats. This empirical knowledge is able to provide pragmatic solutions for effective fire management in the region. Additionally, a strong correlation between forest cover and plant diversity visible in the Western Ghats through time emphasises the crucial role of maintenance of trees for conservation in this human-dominated biodiversity hotspot.
Research findings in EARNEST are relevant to palaeoecologists, ecologists, ecosystem modellers, environmental consultants, policymakers and implementers. A variety of dissemination and knowledge sharing actions were planned and successfully implemented in Europe and India, which include –
Four research seminars
Four conference presentations and two workshop participation
One research publication under consideration; two others in preparation
Two public seminars
Four public writings
Active Twitter presence throughout the course of Project @mscaearnest, here: https://twitter.com/mscaearnest?lang=en
By developing a historical perspective, EARNEST establishes that for the success of environmental management in any tropical region, it is important to recognise that people are part of the landscape. Fire management and conservation frameworks in the face of future monsoon variability can only be effective if they are planned in tandem with careful incorporation of evidence-based traditional land management approaches. Maintaining tree cover in tropical social-ecological systems is imperative for sustaining biodiversity as well as for livelihoods of billions of people, who depend on forested landscapes. In this context, EARNEST shows agroforestry systems form a good practice example of collaborative efforts with benefits to both biodiversity and people. These findings have direct impact on policymaking and effective policy implementation in tropical regions. Specifically, for India, NAP 2014 envisages mainstreaming agroforestry to increase productivity and rural employment while making agricultural landscapes more climate-resilient and hitting the national tree cover target of 33%. EARNEST proposes substantial, practical measures that will sincerely help facilitate the effective implementation of this economically and ecologically important policy and its desired positive social-ecological outcomes.
The multifaceted and innovative EARNEST focusing on ancient Indian agroforestry landscapes provided immense opportunities for Charuta to enhance her expertise in the field of palaeoecology in a new geographical setting. This geographical diversification of research in India has been vital to her growth, setting her on an interdisciplinary path in her home country benefitting its approach to managing social-ecological landscapes with broader global implications. EARNEST has been meticulous policy-oriented research rooted in scientific inquiries, which has evidently added to her confidence in developing, leading and delivering high impact and policy-relevant research projects and increased her employability in research and development in academic as well as non-academic (e.g. NGOs) sectors.
The multifaceted and innovative EARNEST focusing on ancient Indian agroforestry landscapes provided immense opportunities for Charuta to enhance her expertise in the field of palaeoecology in a new geographical setting. This geographical diversification of research in India has been vital to her growth, setting her on an interdisciplinary path in her home country benefitting its approach to managing social-ecological landscapes with broader global implications. EARNEST has been meticulous policy-oriented research rooted in scientific inquiries, which has evidently added to her confidence in developing, leading and delivering high impact and policy-relevant research projects and increased her employability in research and development in academic as well as non-academic (e.g. NGOs) sectors.