Wildlife Photos by Murray Cooper. Photos provided by Cece Acosta, Catie Mae Carey, Jordan Karubian and Treasure Joiner. Above: Madelyn Seward and fellow TIERA Scholars hike on the FCAT reserve.

The Chocó region of South America, nestled between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

It receives an average of eight meters of rainfall each year, more than twice the amount in many parts of the Amazon Rainforest. It’s situated on the equator, spanning from southern Panama into northwestern Ecuador, surrounded by drier regions, and shared by a massive number of endemic species found nowhere else on the planet. The region is of great interest to conservationists hoping to preserve the natural habitat and reverse decades of deforestation.

It is to this unique place that Tulane students travel as part of the Tulane Interdisciplinary Environmental Research & Action (TIERA) Program — the result of a relationship between Tulane and Fundación para la Conservación de los Andes Tropicales (FCAT), an Ecuadorian NGO focused on grassroots research and conservation.

Students in the program participate in a two-week immersive field trip at the FCAT field station over the summer, usually between their sophomore and junior years. They work in groups on ongoing, community-engaged projects that range from water quality and bird diversity to art and social attitudes about conservation.

After the field course, students can apply to be a TIERA Scholar and independently develop a project of their own. If chosen as a TIERA Scholar, these students first take a course in research design, where they work with a faculty advisor and a partner at FCAT to co-design their research and apply for grants, before conducting their research the following summer.

Many TIERA Scholars have focused on ecological projects, but that is only a small part of the research covered by the program. Over the past two years, 32 unique majors were represented among undergraduate students who participated in the field course.

“There were people studying land tenure, the more social side of climate change, looking at carbon credits,” said TIERA Scholar Darbhi Durvasula, a senior studying ecology and evolutionary biology and international development, describing the variety of projects in 2024. “There are a lot of different ways you can tie in more political or economic or social studies into a TIERA Scholar research project.”

“The involvement of the undergraduates serves as a vehicle to foster interdisciplinary research by faculty, as well,” said Jordan Karubian, program director of TIERA and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the School of Science and Engineering. He noted that while many faculty from his department are involved with TIERA, faculty from other departments and schools become advisors to TIERA Scholars and participate in research every year.

Between the fundamentally Tulanian ideals of interdisciplinarity, experiential learning and service work, blended with the community-focused nature of FCAT, TIERA is truly one of a kind. “This program is unique at Tulane, and honestly, I think it’s unique at the national level,” said Karubian. “I don’t know of any other program that exists like this, and I think it’s a real differentiator for Tulane.”

A partnership blossoms

After finishing his PhD in ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, Karubian wanted to use his degree to make a tangible impact on conservation efforts. As a postdoctoral fellow, he moved to Ecuador to study the endemic species there.

“I was thinking I was going to use this experience as a bridge for myself to move into sustainable development, real-world-type work,” said Karubian, “and when I visited this area where TIERA is currently based, it really had a strong effect on me.”

Karubian was studying the long-wattled umbrellabird, a rare bird native to the area. This meant he spent a lot of time exploring agricultural land and patches of forest near farms. While doing this field work, he developed working relationships and friendships with local farmers, which helped to shape his view of how conservation work can be most effective not solely for the environment, but for the community the environment supports.

FCAT was born from these relationships. Karubian and his colleagues formalized the NGO in 2011 based on the principles of community-engaged conservation and the relationships they developed over the previous eight years.

“Conducting research at FCAT is very special because of the organization’s grassroots nature,” said Sunshine Van Bael, associate professor in the School of Science and Engineering, who has performed research at FCAT and served as a faculty advisor for TIERA students. “The station was built by the hands of people who care about the forest around them, who want to preserve it and work with farmers to make it better.” While most research stations are owned and operated by a university or other institution, the FCAT station is run and owned by local Ecuadorians.

When Karubian joined Tulane in 2010, he continued working with the growing team at FCAT from afar. He and his wife and colleague Renata Durães Ribeiro, professor of practice in the School of Science and Engineering, developed a field course called “Tropical Field Biology and Conservation,” which allowed students to develop a project and perform research in Ecuador alongside researchers from FCAT.

The field course was limited in scope, however, and Karubian decided to expand it into a dedicated program: TIERA. The expansion led the way to not only the Scholars program but also to the involvement of faculty, graduate students and other researchers in a variety of fields. As a dedicated program, TIERA now has a scholarship fund that removes financial barriers that might limit involvement by some students.

Karubian describes TIERA as the relationship between Tulane and FCAT, rather than just the field course and Scholars program, and he hopes it continues to grow. Since 2022, 27 faculty have visited FCAT, along with 21 graduate students and a postdoctoral researcher. Just last year, 42 undergraduate students participated in TIERA — eight of whom were TIERA Scholars — and 10 new TIERA Scholars have been accepted to return this summer.

Research takes root

The forests in Ecuador have been subject to deforestation for decades, and FCAT has been working on reforestation efforts since the organization’s inception. The team is tackling the challenge from all angles, as evidenced in the variety of TIERA Scholar projects.

Meryl LaRue, a junior majoring in earth and environmental science, is studying the efficacy behind some of the reforestation methods by evaluating the carbon storage capacity of the reforested areas. She measured the diameter and height of fully grown trees and calculated the biomass and carbon content of each one.

“By using the planting plans for the different restoration plots and the average carbon content for each species, I calculated the amount of carbon each plot could potentially store when the trees are fully grown,” LaRue said.

Treasure Joiner, a senior studying public health, focused her research on the social impacts of climate change on the local community, specifically for women. She asked women who are FCAT employees and local residents about their knowledge and perception of climate change, as well as how it impacts their community and their stress levels.

“I learned that it was a very layered issue.” Joiner said. “Not only are they dealing with the environment, but also the history, the culture and social dynamics.”

While Joiner said many people she interviewed found it difficult to adapt to climate change, the concept of community plays a crucial role. “They’re all working toward a common goal and trying to use environmental leadership and environmental work to help their communities,” she said.

CeCe Acosta (SLA ’24), who graduated from Tulane in spring 2024 with degrees in environmental biology and Latin American Studies, looked at the effectiveness of reforestation efforts through insect predation rates, measuring the number of creatures who tried to eat a decoy caterpillar she placed in various areas.

She placed the caterpillars in different habitat types: pastures, reforested areas and intact forests that had not faced deforestation. Rather than using real caterpillars to track predation, she made fake caterpillars out of non-toxic clay. When predators attempted to eat the clay caterpillars, they left bite marks that helped Acosta determine their species and number. These predators ranged from birds to mammals to bugs, like ants.

Durvasula continued Acosta’s project the following summer, adding research into the importance of scent cues. With the project’s continuation, the effectiveness of these reforestation methods can be tested over time. “It all tells a story,” Durvasula said.

Like all other TIERA Scholar research, these projects were conducted in close collaboration with FCAT researchers. FCAT plans to build upon the outcome of these projects to refine their reforestation methods and education and support initiatives.

Community in the field

A central part of the TIERA experience is the sense of community felt at the FCAT station.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for learning that’s not strictly science, but also learning how to exist in a space that’s different from your home,” said Acosta. “It’s cool to work in a scientific space that’s outside the U.S. and see people doing conservation who aren’t just people in academia.”

She and Durvasula both talked about playing games and listening to music with other volunteers when they weren’t in the field. Joiner and LaRue enjoyed having the chance to get out in nature and hike in their downtime.

“Coming off a busy semester, especially, just having a month that I’m out there in the field, interacting with the environment, with lots of cool people, it’s really special, honestly,” said Durvasula.

The community that students build in Ecuador each summer isn’t left behind when they come back to Tulane.

“[TIERA] has given me a community here on campus, too,” said LaRue. “Everyone that I became close with on the field course, and especially in the TIERA Scholars program, we’ve all stayed connected.”

Paying it forward

Likewise, the students’ work with TIERA isn’t over when they return to Tulane, either. Students present their research at symposiums and poster presentations throughout the year, and many also work with their advisors to publish their research in journals. It is common for TIERA Scholar projects to develop into honors theses.

“An implicit expectation is that there’s some kind of product that they generate that gives back,” said Karubian.

Giving back might look like creating posters that describe best practices, or running Zoom workshops, or creating pamphlets that share results with the community. Even publishing papers or writing an honors thesis helps give back to FCAT, since they can point to the resulting number of publications to show its efficacy as a research station.

In one wide-reaching example, Acosta’s study was picked up by HHMI BioInteractive, a pedagogical biology website for high school and college students. The website includes data from real studies, like Acosta’s, that helps students learn how biological experiments work and how to analyze data. The data she collected, as well as a video about the study itself, will live on the site for classrooms around the world to review.

For the students in TIERA and for the year-round researchers at FCAT, the summer program provides an influx of excitement and inspiration. For the team at FCAT, it motivates their real-world, on-the-ground research, which is done in relative isolation for much of the year. For the students, it gives them concrete examples of their work making a difference, something that Karubian said was essential for him, and something he views as one of the major goals of TIERA.

“If you can provide people with a belief that they can make a difference, then that’s transformative,” he said.