With support from the National Science Foundation, the University of Florida is implementing an Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Program focused on neotropical working forests.

The program offers a tiered interdisciplinary curriculum to train doctoral students who work in partnership with in-country institutions in one or more of four neotropical regions: Maya Forest in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala, Lowland Bolivia, Acre, Brazil and Eastern Amazonia (Pará and Amapá, Brazil).

Our research goals are to (1) analyze tradeoffs and complementarities among working forest options; (2) clarify how biophysical, social, economic and political constraints and their interactions influence the effectiveness of different kinds of working forests for conservation and development; and (3) measure the impacts of capacity-building interventions designed to improve forest management and promote conservation.