UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The latest episode of the Growing Impact podcast features a team of researchers who work collaboratively with communities as they study the environment. Kristina Douglass, an assistant professor of anthropology and African studies, works with communities in Southwest Madagascar researching how the impacts of human adaptation affect the environment. Eric Burkhart is an associate teaching professor and ethnobotanist who works primarily with Appalachian communities studying their plant and fungal use.
Douglass and Burkhart discuss their seed grant project, which is titled Farafatse: Decline and Livelihood Sustainability in SW Madagascar. The goal of this project is to investigate the apparent disappearance of a key Malagasy tree species, the farafatse (Givotia madagascariensis) as well as changes to where the tree is traditionally found.
“This is a tree that is endemic to Southwest Madagascar and is really prized as a material for making the traditional fishing boats, the lakambezo,” Douglass said. “The farafatse is ideal because it strikes the right balance between durability and buoyancy, and people really value this for making boats and other fishing implements.”
According to the team, the farafatse is a bellwether plant or “canary in the coal mine” that can signal concerns that may impact a wide range of plant resources.
“In many ways, this project is a way to understand some of the dynamics that seem to be impacting the farafatse tree’s disappearance and distribution shift more broadly,” Douglass said. “We're focused on farafatse, but really the factors that are affecting the distribution and availability of that species are probably also impacting other important species.”
Douglass and Burkhart said working closely with the communities during this project through an ethnobotanical lens makes the results more equitable and meaningful.
“Ethnobotany is really about identifying collaborative communities and working with them to identify what they're interested in, what kind of botanical information they want to develop and how they want to use it,” Burkhart said.
One of the goals of the project is to develop an ethnobotanical toolkit that will support a wide range of needs, from conservation activities to supply-chain demands, according to the researchers.
“The goal is to empower the communities to start doing this work themselves and to facilitate how that information moves through the pipeline to be used in a scientific way that betters the community,” Burkhart said.
Growing Impact is a podcast by the Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE). It features Penn State researchers who have been awarded IEE seed grants and discusses their foundational work as they further their projects. The podcast is available on multiple platforms, including Apple, Google, Amazon and Spotify.