In 2019 and 2020, a historic drought affected the Mekong Delta, and a series of forest fires burned across central Vietnam. Chau Pham was at Yale University, working on their undergraduate degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.

“These natural disasters were the impetus for me to think about how I can use the ecological knowledge I’ve acquired in the U.S. to address these issues at home in Vietnam,” Pham said.

Pham is now a Ph.D. student in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, studying the dry forests of Central Vietnam and how they respond both to natural disturbances and those caused by people.

Fires naturally happen in the ecosystem Pham studies at Yok Đôn National Park. The forest has a prolonged dry season and the tree species are adapted to fire.

“Fire is very much part of the natural disturbance regime,” Pham said. “However, the policy toward fire management has overwhelmingly been fire suppression for most of the country. That has implications for the biology of the forest, but also for the people who use fire as part of their fire management practices.”

Pham explained that people in the area practice swidden agriculture, also known as slash-and-burn agriculture. In this farming technique, vegetation is cut down and burned to clear land for planting. The resulting layer of ash serves as a fertilizer for crops. After several years of cultivation, the area is left to grow wild and a new plot is cleared. Fire is also used to promote the growth of new grass shoots for cattle grazing and to create wounds on the bark of dipterocarp trees to collect their resin, used as an incense and for lighting torches.

“Fire is not just a natural process but also an anthropogenic process,” Pham said. “I’m trying to use an interdisciplinary approach in my research that addresses both the social side of this landscape and the more natural biological side.”

Pham is honing their interdisciplinary approach as a scholar with the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC).

“I realized pretty early on in my graduate career that I want my research to have real impact for people at home. I’m also aware of the fact that I’m hugely privileged compared to my peers at home due to my education in the U.S. and due to the fact that I’m from a different socioeconomic background than most residents at my field site,” Pham said. “So as a scholar and researcher, I’ve always felt a certain responsibility toward the community of people I work with. Being at ICGC made me realize that I can actually do something concrete about this sense of responsibility, that I can reach across disciplinary boundaries and use research methods from the social sciences and history. I strongly believe that the natural history of my field site is intertwined with the human history, and I probably wouldn’t have had this holistic view of the forest had I stayed within the disciplinary boundary of my main field.”