Achievement

Amanda Henck, Cohort I: The IGERT has given me opportunities to work as the site director for the UW Worldwide undergraduate exchange program at Sichuan University, to spend a year in China doing dissertation research, teach a high school environmental science field course, and participate in interdisciplinary research on the formation of hillslope terraces in Jiuzhaigou National Park (JNP). The hillslope terraces are the result of natural processes and swidden agriculture. The terraces are ideal locations to look for evidence of human occupation as they are near current and abandoned villages and they have a unique signal of elevations, slope, and aspect, so it is possible to predict where they will be. Field work at one set of terraces led to a discovery of a 3000+ year old village, increasing known human occupation of the park from 300 to 3000 years. This research has resulted in several publications and the recent awarding of a Fulbright.