Our core project focuses on Climate Change Adaptation, assessing the risks climate change poses on an area and designing measures to protect its inhabitants and infrastructure.

This project deploys the tools of community science, in which local members of communities in two countries – Ecuador and Guatemala – partner with technical experts from our research team to conceive, plan, execute, analyze, and disseminate scientific research on pressing questions at the interface between the human and non-human environment. The projects are currently based in the town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno on the island of San Cristóbal, the community of Santa Catalina in mainland Ecuador, and the coastal town of El Garriton in Guatemala. 

Below, you can find links to our current project and sites, in addition to links to our older LAVA projects. LAVA, or Laboratorio para Apreciar la Vida y el Ambiente, was a series of community science initiatives that address issues at the intersection of ecology, conservation, and education. LAVA took a three-tiered approach to community science: the first tier was the science project itself, investigating issues of interest to the community of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. The second tier included an assessment of the impacts of this project and how it shaped the knowledge and attitudes of the people involved in carrying it out. The third tier was a philosophical reflection on how this model of doing science with a community could inform questions about the epistemology and ethics of science.