Earthwatch's Priority Research Areas
To ensure our research addresses pressing global environmental issues, Earthwatch will preferentially fund projects that fit the focus of one or more of these four priority research areas:
Sustainable Resource Management
Sustainable resource management is essential to sustaining global ecosystems that provide the goods and services on which we all rely, including biodiversity, food, water, timber, fibre and medicine. The three Initiatives focus on species, habitats and freshwater resources, at a landscape scale. Earthwatch research is focussed in multiple areas from unspoilt centres of biodiversity (including protected areas) to multi-use, farmed, urban and forested landscapes.
Climate Change
Climate change poses a significant challenge to the sustainability of societies and the ecosystems upon which they depend. One of the Initiatives will determine appropriate management practises to allow species, ecosystems and human communities to adapt to and cope with the consequences of climate change. A second Initiative will examine how to mitigate the effects of climate change through a better understanding of the storage of carbon in, for example, forests and soils. A third Initiative will assess the impacts of climate change on high risk species, habitats and the livelihoods that depend on this biodiversity.
Oceans
Coastal areas are the most productive region of the oceans and yet the most threatened. Human activity and environmental change are impacting coastal areas and key species through fishing activities, oil exploration and production, shipping, invasive species, coastal development, pollutants and climate change. One PRA initiative will focus on coastal ecosystem services, their maintenance and restoration. A second initiative will investigate methods for maintaining viable populations of threatened marine species.
Sustainable Cultures
Earthwatch's sustainable cultures projects bridge the intersection between social and ecological systems to investigate human interactions with the environment, both past and present. Research will focus on socio-cultural links to natural resource use, environmental management, and biocultural diversity, with the aim of restoring, revitalizing, and conserving our global cultural heritage.
Earthwatch views these priority areas as building blocks for understanding links between the environment and the human population, which can in turn be used to create positive action. Earthwatch will be developing and refining its priority area focus in the year ahead shaped by the continuing successes of the huge and highly valued input made by our volunteers and research fellows in our field research projects.