Jun 03, 2016

Janice Liang ’16 and Professors Collaborate on Article about Agriculture and Food in Ethiopia

Janice Liang ’16, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Travis Reynolds, and Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biology Cathy Collins are coauthors on an article published in April 2016 in AIMS Agriculture and Food. The article (online here) is titled “Effects of exotic Eucalyptus spp. plantations on soil properties in and around sacred natural sites in the northern Ethiopian Highlands.” Liang, listed as first author, graduated in 2016 as an environmental science major with distinction in the major. Other coauthors of the paper were Alemayehu Wassie of the Bahir Dar University faculty and Atalel Wubalem, an Ethiopian graduate of the Wondo Genet College of Forestry at Hawassa University, where Reynolds taught in summer 2012.

Liang worked in Ethiopia under a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) grant titled “The Cultural, Economic and Ecological Roles of Church Forests in Ethiopia” (led by primary investigator [PI] Reynolds and co-PI Collins). Colby research in the Ethiopian Orthodox church forests was the subject of a Colby Magazine article in 2013.