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Research

At CASEL, we're working on several concurrent projects

To stay up to date on the latest research from the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL) at Indiana University Bloomington, we invite you to follow our CASEL Lab page on CASEL Lab Research Gate. This page features the newest publications, working papers, and collaborative research produced by CASEL faculty, students, and affiliates. By following our ResearchGate page, you can easily access recent articles, book chapters, and interdisciplinary research exploring human–environment interactions, sustainability, governance, and landscape change around the world. It is the best way to keep track of the evolving scholarship and collaborations emerging from the CASEL community.

Banner image: Lucy Miller (right) helps prepare açaí berries for pulp processing in Gurupá, Pará, Brazil. | Photo courtesy of Lucy Miller

FACULTY PROJECTS

NSF-CHN2 Integrating Cross-scale Socio-Ecological Feedbacks in Freshwater Fisheries

The CHN2 project, titled in Portuguese “Sociecologia do Pirarucu,” is a collaborative NSF-funded initiative that brings together the CASEL Lab at Indiana University in partnership with collaborators at Virginia Tech, Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, The Juruá Institute, and University of Northern British Columbia, along with collaborating fishing associations and communities. The project seeks to understand how freshwater fisheries are shaped by dynamic interactions across scales, from everyday decision-making within fishing communities to broader regional institutions, markets, and ecological change. The project centers on a simple but powerful idea: fisheries are not only ecological systems or social systems, but coupled systems where fish, fishers, rules, knowledge, livelihoods, and environments continually shape one another. By tracing feedbacks across community, landscape, and governance levels, CHN2 generates insights that are both scientifically rigorous and directly relevant for sustaining fisheries, riverscapes, and the people who depend on them.

Project contact: Eduardo Brondízio

Forested area along Yadkin Pee Dee River Basin.

Ecohydrological modeling

Modeling the ecohydrological interactions among land use change, climate variability, and forest condition in the Yadkin-Pee Dee River Basin: This project will synthesize research in hydrology, forest ecology, LULC (land-cover/land-use), and water resources systems to explain and predict the future vulnerability and susceptibility of freshwater supply systems under the climate change along the Mountain-Piedmont-Coastal Plain gradient in the southeastern U.S.

Project contact: Tae Hee Hwang

GRADUATE STUDENT PROJECTS

Negotiations Gaining Traction on the Global Goal on Adaptation during the 62nd Session of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice. Bonn, Germany. June 2025. Image courtesy of Beatriz Lima Ribeiro

Indigenous Peoples and the Making of Global Environmental Governance

My research has examined how institutionalized spaces for Indigenous Peoples’ representation and participation in global environmental governance have developed and currently operate within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). My work is grounded in collaborative, interdisciplinary research and service, and contributes to ongoing debates in environmental politics by focusing on questions of legitimacy, participation, and institutional design. Within this scenario, I explore how Indigenous Peoples actively use these forums as part of broader strategies of resistance, given that bureaucratic language and resulting policies have direct impacts on Indigenous territories and livelihoods. At the same time, Indigenous Peoples have increasingly been positioned as central actors and often portrayed as “saviors” of the climate and biodiversity crises, while continuing to face persistent violations to their rights and land across global, regional, and local levels.

Project contact: Beatriz Lima Ribeiro

Map showing the streamflow gages used in eastern U.S. watershed study. Courtesy of Parisa Yousefi

Drivers of Spring Streamflow Timing in the Eastern U.S. watersheds

My research examines how seasonal streamflow timing is changing across eastern U.S. watersheds and how those changes are shaped by climate, vegetation, and land-surface conditions. Seasonal streamflow timing describes when streamflow is concentrated within the year, and analyzing changes in timing indicates whether the pattern of flow has shifted earlier or later. In simpler terms, her work studies when water moves through rivers and streams during the year, and why that timing may be changing. Using long-term streamflow records, climate data, satellite-based vegetation data, and watershed land-cover data, this project explores how precipitation, temperature, and spring green-up may influence seasonal water patterns across different land-cover settings.

Project contact: Parisa Yousefi

Seeing, Speaking, Hearing "Green"

My research considers these questions on the Greek island of Astypalaia, which since 2020 has been home to a sustainable development initiative titled the “Smart and Sustainable Island” project. I combine approaches from linguistic anthropology, environmental anthropology, political ecology, and sound studies to understand how discourses of sustainability are formed and circulate in and around Astypalaia. Blending ethnographic methods of participant observation, interviews, sound elicitations, and linguistic landscaping, my research examines how sustainability is practiced and talked about in Astypalaia and how such practices and discourses interact with ongoing sustainable development.

Project contact: Nikolina Zenović

Downtown Dubuque, IA which has recently been restored with the help of federal funding and revitalized by local artists with painted murals (September 2025). Courtesy of Rachel Seymour

The Work of Staying: Aging, Precarity, and Placemaking in a Post-Industrial City

My project examines different meanings of care, placemaking, and social responsibility in post-industrial landscapes with older adults in the American Midwest. I explore how residents navigate economic precarity and neighborhood change within communities shaped and changed over time by industrial decline. By employing community-engaged research methods and centering local knowledge, I aim to understand how older adults maintain and reshape neighborhood relationships, navigate systems of support, and adapt to shifting social and spatial environments.

Project contact: Rachel Seymour

Fieldwork with leaders and members of the pirarucu/arapaima co-management system and community associations in Bom Jardim, RDS Mamirauá, Brazilian Amazon. Courtesy of Adriana Abreu

Multiscale Collective Governance, Ecological Sustainability, and Social Equity in Amazonian Fisheries

Adriana’s research examines community-based pirarucu/arapaima fisheries management in the Brazilian Amazon to understand how governance arrangements shape ecological sustainability and social equity. Using Ostrom’s design principles as a comparative framework and a multiscale social-ecological approach, she maps the presence, implementation, and effectiveness of management rules across communities, while analyzing how community-level social, geographic, and demographic characteristics, formal institutions, social norms, and regional social-ecological change influence collective governance. Her work also traces the evolution of women’s participation in fisheries co-management, examining the social and institutional factors that shape the visibility and formal recognition of women’s labor, knowledge, participation, and leadership, as well as the conditions that constrain or enable their roles in co-management.

Project contact: Adriana Abreu

RESEARCH AFFILIATE / VISITING SCHOLAR PROJECTS

Two federal conservation agents, a volunteer firefighter, and CASEL Visting Scholar Grania Power travel to meet with traditional communities in a "brightspot" of effective fire management in the North-Eastern Brazilian Amazon. Photo courtesy of Grania Power

Following the light: using ‘brightspots’ to prevent future Amazonian fires

Uncontrolled fires are increasing in frequency, scale, and intensity in Amazonia and elsewhere in global tropical rainforests, as a result of land cover change driven by climate change, and resource extraction from tropical rainforests to global wealth centers. This project seeks to identify “brightspots” of effective fire management resulting in positive wellbeing and forest conservation outcomes for local communities in the Brazilian Amazon. “Brightspots” studies highlight positive outliers and success stories in conservation frontiers, and seek to recommend ways to upscale their success; this project is the first to look for brightspots in forest fire prevention, and results will be applied to make recommendations for the application of new Integrated Fire Management strategies in the Amazon biome in Brazil.

Project contact: Grania Power

This image are of the mangrove in the city of Guarujá, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Photo courtesy of Paulo Ramos

Bodies of Water: The ethnography WE of the Poetics of Black Feeling–Making

Paulo’s research project Bodies of Water (“Corpos d’água”) explores environmental racism and Black women’s relationships to water. Part of his work offers artistic performance that delves into conceptual realms through poetry and corporeal expression, and he has published a volume of poetry also entitled Bodies of Water. Paulo’s performance invites a sensory experience while reflecting on environmental racism and transcending racial and class boundaries. Focusing on the connection between water and Black women, Paulo’s work highlights the draining of dreams and lives from Black bodies by the state, a situation that dates back to colonial Brazil. The situation Paulo examines constitutes an ongoing cycle of violence deeply rooted in the legacy of slavery and entrenched within institutional frameworks.

Project contact: Paulo Ramos