Bryant’s Robert Patalano ’08, Ph.D., recently received a four-year grant through the National Science Foundation’s International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program to support student research in Tanzania and Germany. Starting in the summer of 2026, three undergraduates and one graduate student will be selected each year to travel abroad to conduct field and laboratory work and gain unique cultural experiences. Below, Bryant News chatted with the Biological and Biomedical Sciences lecturer about the opportunity:
Tell us about this upcoming research endeavor and what it entails?
The idea with this project, Ecological Resilience of Afromontane Forests (EcoRAFT), is to give international research experiences to students who may have never had the opportunity to travel internationally and may never have had the opportunity to do scientific research. EcoRAFT will have positive effects on increasing scientific literacy and reducing science anxiety.
We will first be traveling to Tanzania to collect samples for studying long-term natural and human impacts to the Afromontane Forests of the Usambara Mountains. We will also look at the ways in which different agriculture practices and cash crop farming have impacted the Afromontane forests, how changes in rainfall patterns have affected people living in this part of Eastern Africa, and to see whether or not these mountain ecosystems can withstand the consequences of human-made climate change, seeing as they were able to withstand major climate changes of the Pleistocene, better known as the Ice Age. Our goal is to understand what happened in the past in order to get a general idea of what'll happen in the future so that we can establish the first model of climate resilience for the region.
Next summer, we’ll spend four weeks in Tanzania sampling, working with the local communities of Fune, Mombo, and Mkokola, and reviewing colonial era archives stored at the University of Dar es Salaam. This will be followed by five weeks in Germany for lab work, data analysis, and modeling where we’ll try to date samples and recover past climate and environmental information. This portion will take place at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, a leading international research institution focused on the study of human impacts across the globe.
How did this research study idea come about?
This idea goes to when I first travelled to Tanzania for my Ph.D. in 2014. I remember being curious about why there was no Stone Age archaeology research in the Usambara Mountains, and how there was relatively little-known information about both the human and climate history from the Pleistocene.
When I was doing my postdoc in Germany in 2022, I got funding from the Max Planck Society to do a survey season; this was the official launch of the Usambara Mountains Archaeology and Paleoecology Project (UMAPP). During this field season, we surveyed 22 rock shelters and six open-air sites and collected 35 ecological baseline samples along four altitudinal transects. With colleagues from the University of Dar es Salaam, we uncovered 400 artifacts and geofacts and found two spectacular stone tools, one of which showed that there'd probably been long-term occupation of the region well beyond the last 2,000 years.
We also found some swamps that are good for long-term paleo-environmental and paleo-climate studies. The plan, now, is to core into the bottom sediments of the swamp as such locations act as archives for preserving long-term environmental information. These types of studies are limited to the last 4,300 years, which is amazing, because the mountain forests are a biodiversity hotspot — meaning a lot of the plants and animals are found nowhere else on Earth. In the fall of 2024, we applied for a National Science Foundation grant to continue this work through the IRES program.
Why is this an important topic to look into?
We know humans have been living in tropical forests for at least 150,000 years, so it's likely that people were living in these mountains during periods of climate change in the past because it would have been a fallback area for food and water resources when the surrounding landscape might have become really dry or hot; however, we don’t know this for sure because it has never been looked into. Additionally, because the Usambaras have their own unique climate system distinct from neighboring areas, when there were regional climate changes during the Ice Age, it is thought that the mountains weren’t impacted as the adjacent lowlands. Yet, because there are no long-term paleoenvironmental studies, we don't know to what extent they were buffered from regional climate changes, if at all.
Today, a lot of food is grown in the mountains, and we know that cash crop farming going back to the German Colonial period has altered local hydrogeography. There have also been changes in precipitation patterns and stream channels to the point where some of the major rivers in the area are no longer rivers, or they only flow during the rainy season. Results from this project will launch entirely new research initiatives into human-forest interactions and add to the growing knowledge of environmental complexity and ecological diversity in relation to human activity. We hope to can gain a better understanding of what might happen to the endemic species in the face of human-caused climate change.
What else would you like people to know about this study?
This initiative is not just us going in, doing the work, and leaving. First and foremost, this is a collaboration with the University of Dar es Salaam. We are also involving local people from the Usambaras as they have first-hand knowledge of the region and have seen changes to the local ecosystems. We want to use the data we collect to help local people plan for any future climate change impacts. That is, maybe they've noticed changes in rainfall or changes in wildlife populations over the years. What do they think is the cause and what might we do to help long-term?
In the face of climate change, we want these communities to be resilient and continue what they've been doing for hundreds of years. We want to have a forecast of what to expect in the future and see if we can build upon the historical records to predict that and then help people locally to say, ‘This is what you can expect to experience going forward.’
Lastly, EcoRAFT is designed to provide Bryant students with a unique, multinational research experience and is going to open a lot of doors for students. Not only are they gaining international experience by working and living in different countries, but they are exploring their interest in the sciences and making professional, international connections that could benefit them in graduate programs and the workforce.
Who can apply and when do individuals need to apply by?
Students from all the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Health and Behavioral Sciences, and College of Business, are welcome to apply. Applicants do not need to have any prior coursework, research, fieldwork, or laboratory experience; as long as students have an interest in working collaboratively within a team environment, they are welcome to get involved.
Additionally, prior travel and study abroad experiences are not required, though special consideration will be given to students with no or minimal prior travel experience. Student applications will be accepted from September through November, with an annual application deadline of November 30th. All costs will be covered by the project, including travel, room-and-board, meals, etc., and the grant will cover costs associated with getting a passport or field work clothing, if students do not already have them.
Patalano will hold information sessions during the fall and spring semesters for those interested in applying for this opportunity. Questions can be directed to rpatalan@bryant.edu.