Darla Munroe, associate professor, geography, was selected for a Fulbright Award. Munroe will be conducting research on “Comparative Forest Transitions in Rural Peripheries,” at the Geography Institute, Humboldt University, Berlin in 2012.

Munroe with be collaborating with geographers and agricultural economists in Berlin to study patterns of forest change and underlying social processes (dramatic deforestation followed by slow but steady forest regrowth). Of particular interest to Munroe are the rural areas where economies were initially based around natural resource extraction (timber or mining), and now have a nascent tourist industry. Munroe will be looking at some major economic and political changes and how those changes have affected whether people use or don’t use forests.

Munroe plans to use some of the land-use models she is developing with her students here in Ohio to study forests elsewhere.