Ted Gragson

Professor
Associate Director of the Sustainable Human Ecosystems Laboratory
Ph.D. Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, 1989
tgragson@uga.edu

I am presently working in two field locations on the decision-making processes that link individuals to their natural and social environments in time and through space. In my research in the Chaco of western Paraguay I am gathering comparative ethnographic information among indigenous and non-indigenous residents along with environmental information that with the aid of geographic information systems I am using to understand human responses to biophysical and historical contingencies. I am considering how the landscape is partitioned by different resident groups into resource production areas roughly equivalent to habitats and how these empirical ethnic landscapes form the basis of land claims within the novel and emerging political environment of democratization.

My research in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the southeastern United States is part of the Coweeta Long-Term Ecological Research Project directed at understanding natural and anthropogenic disturbance on ecological processes over large temporal and spatial scales. The goal of this collaborative effort is to develop a predictive understanding of the social and economic processes tied to land use and land cover change in the Southern Appalachians. My present research is directed at understanding how the various legacies of human land use at different time periods over the last 300 years influence subsequent human land use activities and contribute to contemporary patterns in terrestrial and aquatic macrobiota.

Recent publications:

• Gragson, Ted L., and Blount, Ben G., eds. 1999. Ethnoecology: Knowledge, Resources and Rights. The University of Georgia Press: Athens.
• Gragson, Ted L. 1998. Potential vs. Actual Vegetation: Human Behavior in a Landscape Medium. Advances in Historical Ecology. William Balée, ed. Pp. 213-231. Columbia University Press: New York.
• Gragson, Gay M., and Ted L. Gragson. 1998. Uncertain Science and the Sponsored Research Process. Interpretations of Scientific Discourse: Rhetorical, Historical, Linguistic and Pedagogical Perspectives. John Battalio, ed. Pp. 3-21. ABLEX Publishing: Norwood, NJ.
• Gragson, Ted L. 1997. The Use of Underground Plant Organs and Its Relation to Habitat Selection Among the Pumé Indians of Venezuela. Economic Botany 51(4):377-384.
• Gragson, Ted L. 1997. The Institutional Context of Irrigation in the Bajo Yaque del Norte Project, Dominican Republic. Human Organization 56(2):153-157.