General Research Themes

My research focuses on the human dimensions of environmental change in forest and coastal systems and the social and ecological feedbacks resulting from human-environment interactions. Of particular interest to me in this area is how subsistence based natural resource use and extraction affects ecosystem services critical for human well-being and vice versa. I'm particularly interested in identifying how slow variables (such as chronic resource use or environmental degradation) interact with fast variables (such as extreme weather events or tsunamis) across spatial scales to help inform conservation and development planning. Overall, I'm dedicated to finding ways in which ecological science and conservation efforts can be applied and more effectively leveraged to help reduce poverty and to build resilience of poor communities.

Doctoral work

My doctoral research aimed to identify the spatial and temporal patterns of land cover change in Madagascar and to further understanding on the physical and human drivers influencing those changes. To answer these questions, I integrated satellite data of varying spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions to assess forest cover change patterns at a national scale in relation to both human (Ingram and Dawson, 2005a) and climatic factors (Ingram and Dawson, 2005b) and at a landscape scale in relation to anthropogenic factors (Ingram and Dawson, 2006). At the landscape scale, I integrated remotely sensed data with field collected data on forest structure to elucidate patterns of forest condition in relation to human accessibility and climate (Ingram et al. 2005a).   Here, I also conducted ecological inventories of tree species diversity (Ingram et al. 2005b), with an emphasis on species of use to local people and of particular importance to conservation (endemic species) to assess the compatibility of biodiversity conservation with the conservation of species critical for human livelihoods.

Post-doctoral work

As a post-doctoral fellow at the Earth Institute of Columbia University, I continued to explore related topics through several primary projects all of which had the common objective of understanding human-environment interactions for poverty reduction and for natural resource conservation. I continued to work in Madagascar to address how the establishment of a protected area affected provisioning services available to the communities surrounding the park (Brown et al ., In Preparation ). Here, my colleagues and I have been interested in the diversity, abundance and structure of non-native and utilitarian trees inside and outside of the park and how these biological populations are affected by different human use practices associated with varying social-ecological conditions. At the Earth Institute, I also worked in an interdisciplinary team of researchers in the tsunami affected areas of Sri Lanka to assess the factors that influenced ecological, structural and social resilience or vulnerability to the event. Our research suggested that policy based on an understanding of complex human-environment interactions and the ways in which ecological functioning and condition affect human well-being, and vice versa, could significantly reduce vulnerability to hazards in the future (Ingram et al. 2006). I have also worked with colleagues at the Earth Institute to synthesize many of these issues in an editorial and a review of the role of ecology in poverty reduction (Rumbaitis-del Rio et al . 2005, DeClerk et al. 2006).   This research was born out of widespread support for a workshop on this topic, which we hosted at the Ecological Society of America meeting in 2005 and continued as oral sessions at the Ecological Society of America meetings in 2006 and 2007.

This site was updated on September 26, 2007. For more information, please feel free to contact me at: janecarteringram@gmail.com .

Select Publications

Brown, K., Ingram, J.C. and others. Tree biodiversity and abundance in relation to socio-economic factors in Ranomafana, National Park, Madagascar. In preparation

Ingram, J.C . , Dawson, T. 2006. Forest cover, condition and ecology in human-impacted forests, south-eastern Madagascar. Invited paper for Conservation and Society 4: 194-230

DeClerck, F*, Ingram J.C.* , Rumbaitis del Rio, C*. 2006. The role of ecological theory and practice in poverty alleviation and environmental conservation. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4: 533-540 * represents equal authorship

Ingram, J.C ., Franco, G., Rumbaitis del Rio, C., Khazai, B. 2006 . Post-disaster recovery dilemmas: challenges in balancing short-term and long-term needs for vulnerability reduction. Environmental Science and Policy 9: 607-613

Khazai, B., Franco, G., Ingram, J.C. , Rumbaitis del Rio, C., Dias, P., Dissanayake, R., Chandratilake, R., Kannu, J. 2006. Post-tsunami reconstruction in Sri Lanka and its potential impacts on future vulnerability. Earthquake Spectra 22: S829-S84

Ingram, J.C. , Dawson, T. 2005a. Inter-annual analysis of deforestation hotspots in Madagascar from high temporal resolution satellite observations. International Journal of Remote Sensing 26: 1447-1461

Ingram, J.C. , Dawson, T. 2005b. Climate change impacts and vegetation response on the island of Madagascar. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 363: 55-59

Ingram, J.C. , Dawson, T., Whittaker, R.J. 2005a. Mapping tropical forest structure in south-eastern Madagascar using remote sensing and artificial neural networks. Remote Sensing of the Environment 94: 491- 507   

Ingram, J.C. , Whittaker, R.J., Dawson, T. 2005b. Tree structure and diversity in human-impacted littoral forests, Madagascar. Environmental Management 35: 779-798

Rumbaitis del Rio, C., Ingram J.C. , DeClerck, F. 2005. Leveraging ecological knowledge to end global poverty. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9: 463

Ingram, J.C. , Dawson, T. 2001. The Impacts of a river effluent on the coastal seagrass habitats of Mahe, Seychelles. South African Journal of Botany 67: 483-487