Facilitating forest restoration to improve sustainability of tropical swidden agriculture

About the project

One of the global challenges is to achieve food security in the face of an expanding world population. This challenge is particularly relevant to PNG, where 85% of the population depend on swidden agriculture, within the third largest area of tropical forest worldwide. A key part of the swidden agricultural cycle is the fallow period. Due to increased demand for agricultural plots because of population growth, fallow periods are reducing. One approach to adapting to this could be to speed up the ecological processes that take place during the fallow period by facilitating soil and forest restoration.

This would likely involve: (1) Quantifying biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, particularly below-ground, across a range of ages of fallow plots; (2) Testing novel ways of managing the fallow period to restore ecosystem functioning faster, e.g. soil inoculations or planting cover crops; (3) Investigating whether and which fallow management methods are likely to be adopted by local farmers using socio-ecological surveys; and (4) Given results for (2) and (3), determining which methods of fallow management are most likely to enable plots to be reused successfully after a shorter fallow period.

The student tackling this project will accomplish original science in a tropical ecosystem, alongside delivering feasible adaptations to address a challenge faced by many tropical countries.

For full project details visit the Inspire project page .

Supervisors

• Becky Morris (University of Southampton)
• Jake Snaddon (University of Southampton)

Potential supervisors

• Potential supervisors: Lead supervisor BM Dr Becky Morris Associate Professor

Lead supervisor

• Lead supervisor: BM Dr Becky Morris Associate Professor

Dr Becky Morris

• Dr Becky Morris: Associate Professor

Entry requirements

A 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent , in any earth or environmental science discipline.

Fees and funding

INSPIRE studentships are funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, part of UK Research and Innovation, UKRI). The stipend is in line with UKRI standard levels, including the recent cost of living increase.

All studentships are fully funded for 3.5 years.

How to apply

To make an application, visit the how to apply section of the Inspire website .

Contact us

For questions about the project, email Dr Becky Morris:

For questions about the application process, email the graduate school office:

• r.j.morris@soton.ac.uk
• gsnocs@soton.ac.uk

Research areas