This document provides an overview of recent, current, and projected activities related to the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program at Indiana University. It describes past and planned IFRI training sessions. It also outlines several research projects and papers that utilize the IFRI database, including studies on adaptation to climate change among coffee farmers, global forest governance, and leadership outcomes in IFRI forests.

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.