My research interests reflect my background in ecological/environmental anthropology, international development and agricultural sustainability. Most of my research projects are ethnographically grounded and motivated by my theoretically informed commitment to ecological anthropology as a foundation for studies in the coupled human-ecological system, particularly the human dimensions of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC).

Among land change scientists, there is a growing recognition of the need for an integrative, multiscalar approach to study the impact of agricultural land-use strategies on LULCC. This is also a call to move beyond the existing LULCC framework used in numerous studies, which mostly tend to focus on "conversion" of land-cover (e.g, forest to agriculture). However, compared to the conversion mode of land-cover, agricultural “modification activities” of LULCC are too subtle and dynamic to be detected from ecological and remote sensing methods alone. Anthropologists and others with ethnographic training and an interdisciplinary approach are particularly well equipped to address this need. Having remote sensing expertise thus has strengthened my training and research.

While I draw upon anthropological methods and insights to decipher and analyze the processes of sociocultural change, I use ecological theories and remote sensing to reveal the patterns of environmental change. When properly applied, remote sensing applications can provide powerful “means of matching” to anthropological investigations, as those applications enable analysis and visualization of complex environmental data. I rely on anthropological knowledge and methods to gather historical facts and humanistic narratives, but I support the use of spatial knowledge and techniques as "means of matching" to strengthen empirical evidence.

I have collaborated with several scholars, both Nepali and foreign, in the past to study mountain communities in Nepal and have had funding to support my research from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), Ford Foundation, World Bank and USAID.

Some of my recent research projects are:

Dissertation research (Smallholders, Mountain Agriculture and Land Change)
My dissertation: Smallholders, Mountain Agriculture and Land Change in Lamjung District, Nepal integrated ethnographic and spatially-explicit survey data with remote sensing and GIS applications to study: (a) the household conditions and community contexts under which mountain smallholders change their agricultural land-use strategies, and (b) how their land-use strategies are linked to the district scale land-cover change patterns identified from multi-temporal (1976, 1984, 1990, 1994, 1999 and 2003) Landsat images. Although I targeted a particular culture and place (Gurungs living in the foothills of the Mt. Annapurna range), my findings contributed to the general relationships underlying subsistence behavior of mountain smallholders, their dependence on land and forest resources, and the extent to which their behaviors are historically influenced by the changes in demography, livelihoods, local economy, and institutions. This research was funded by the NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant (BCS 0350127) and my graduate training leading to this research was supported through NASA Earth System Sciences Fellowship (Grant no. NNG04GQ16H) and University of Georgia Graduate School Dissertation Completion Award.

Social exclusion and vulnerability in Nepal
I conducted this study prior to my doctoral training in anthropology; nevertheless, it is based on the extensive fieldwork conducted in 25 different villages in five different districts dispersed across Nepal. It explored the complex relationships between land stress, forest resource degradation, food deficit and vulnerability and also analyzed the coping and adaptation strategies of these groups to offset the adverse impact. In this study I first characterized the systemic nature of social exclusion and its empirical evidence in the context of land and natural resource management in Nepal. Secondly, I contextualized the notion of social exclusion to explain why the impact of land stress and forest resources degradation are experienced differently by social excluded groups, particularly why some groups manage to respond to land stress and forest degradation better than others. This research was supported by the Robert McNamara Fellowship of the World Bank.

Community-based conservation and development: Action research programs
Earlier in my career, I worked at the Institute of Integrated Development Studies (IIDS)--a leading research organization--in Nepal. Policy research is its main focus, but IIDS also implements action research programs, which are based on the concept “self-reliant development of the poor by the poor” to support the grass-roots level institutions created by marginal and socially excluded groups. Depending on the needs and priorities identified by these institutions, the programs implement a wide range of participatory activities to support livelihoods, including community forestry, savings, micro-credit lending, food security, agroforestry, and so forth. These action research programs provided me with great opportunities to learn about rural livelihoods and institutions, which I believe also got me interested in anthropology.

Research Plan
I plan to pursue my future research in two directions: (1) to continue land change studies covering the rural-urban gradient in the Himalaya and in the US Southwest; and (2) to collaborate in studies examining the impact of climate change in the mountains (e.g. melting glaciers, adaptation and vulnerability, mountain agriculture, and migration).