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We support environmental stewardship and care of ecocultural
systems with community. 

ResearchInterests

Ethnoecology   Food sovereignty   Food and seed systems   Indigenous horticulture and plant care   Climate change and Indigenous Peoples   Environmental stewardship and social-ecological health and wellbeing   Indigenous led environmental monitoring   Ecocultural restoration and revitalization    Natural resource management and food policy   Two-eyed seeing Community based participatory research  Indigenous approaches to research   Allyship

News

  • Applications are now open for the Ph.D. Environment and Society Program in ENVS at Emory University. Applications due December 1st. Please see here for more details and reach out to Dr. Mucioki if you are interested. We are recruiting one funded student to start September 2025.

  • New article on gardening and traditional food systems in Alaska in Agriculture and Human Values

  • New community brief on Indigenous foods systems in Anchorage, Alaska​

  • New review paper: Climate and land-use change impacts on cultural use berries in Plants, People, Planet

  • Guest editor and contributor to two part special issue on Native Plants and Climate Change in Artemisia, the journal of the California Native Plants Society

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We acknowledge the Muscogee (Creek) people who lived, worked, produced knowledge on, and nurtured the land where Emory’s Oxford and Atlanta campuses are now located. In 1821, fifteen years before Emory’s founding, the Muscogee were forced to relinquish this land. We recognize the sustained oppression, land dispossession, and involuntary removals of the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples from Georgia and the Southeast. Our lab strives to learn about and respect Indigenous lands and partner with and serve Indigenous Peoples in the work that we do. We aim to build relationships with Muscogee and Cherokee People built on reciprocity, trust, and responsibility and engage in scholarship and service that uplifts Indigenous priorities and strengths with community.

Recent Publications

See all our publications on Google Scholar

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Gardening practices in Alaska build on traditional food system foundations

Megan Mucioki, Sean Kelly, Davin Holen, Bronwen Powell, Tikaan Galbreath, Sarah Paterno, Robbi Nixon, and Guangqing Chi

Community-based food cultivation by and for rural Alaskans has never been stronger. Rural gardeners, many Indigenous, provide their families and communities with affordable access to high-quality fruits and vegetables and other locally grown foods. Despite these emerging trends, there is sparse examination of gardening as a complementary, diversification, or adaptation strategy in wild food-centered systems and the interchange of values and worldviews among practices. Findings from interviews and surveys in Dillingham, Alaska, and interviews with community-focused gardens throughout the state, inform our research questions about the role of gardening in rural Alaska and the links between food cultivation practices and wild food traditions. In this study we find that home gardeners are essential pillars of food sovereignty and security in their communities, providing both gardened foods and high volumes and more diversity of wild foods. Gardening households increase the diversity of shared food resources in the community and serve as sinks of gardening knowledge and supplies for other community members. Traditional food practices and ethics are interwoven into gardening and have become part of annual food rounds and celebrations. Locally, cultivated foods are often described as a complement to age-old foodways that draw on histories and values connected to Indigenous agriculture and horticulture in the United States and Canada. Policies, practices, and programming of food and nutrition security and food sovereignty must consider the holistic food system and strategies that communities desire and invest in.

Climate and land-use change impacts on cultural use berries: Considerations for mitigative stewardship

Megan Mucioki

Almost 200 different species of berries are used for food and medicine by Indigenous Peoples, with unparalleled nutritional and cultural significance among plant foods. Environmental and land-use change is increasingly compromising access to, availability of, and consumption of berries. In this review, I consider (a) how climate and land-use change are impacting cultural use berries across species and places, as documented by Indigenous Peoples and in the scientific literature, and (b) how stewardship practices are being applied to promote resilience and sustainability in berrying landscapes experiencing stress. Climate impacts on Arctic and subarctic berry species include earlier ripening, changes in taste, or increased variability in abundance. These same regions are experiencing a proliferation of shrubs, while forests throughout the lower 48 and Canada are suffering from suffocating fuel loads and stand densities that are not conducive to berry habitat for many species. In the Pacific West, berries are influenced by prolonged droughts and increasing spring and summer temperatures. Climate change impacts are amplified by shifts in land use for forestry and agriculture. Biocultural stewardship practices, like low-intensity fire, thinning, transplanting, and cultural care, can be used to mitigate these impacts and promote berry microclimate habitats. There is opportunity for intertribal networking and knowledge sharing around berry stewardship practices that will support local and regional climate change responses.

Megan Mucioki, Jennifer Sowerwine, Daniel Sarna-Wojcicki, Kathy McCovey, Shawn D Bourque

Indigenous People in the Klamath River Basin have cared for and utilized ecosystems and component resources since time immemorial, proactively conserving species through continuous use and stewardship. Though many culturally significant plants are still tended and used by Indigenous people, many species are also experiencing prolonged stress from colonial forest management practices and environmental change. By integrating western and Indigenous ways of knowing, as part of a participatory and collaborative research and extension project, we present an approach to informing the conservation of four culturally significant plants (tanoak, evergreen huckleberry, beargrass, and iris) and understanding the influence of bioclimatic factors and stress on Indigenous people’s relationships with plants and the broader forest ecosystem. Mixed methods and ways of knowing generate a detailed assessment of each case study species that presence only species distribution models cannot supply alone. In this study we use MAXENT to model species distributions of our four study species and the flexible coding method in NVivo for qualitative interview and focus group data. Using species distribution models and 127 interviews and focus groups with cultural practitioners, we found significant shifts in huckle- berry harvesting times, beargrass and iris cultural use quality, and tanoak acorn availability that must be addressed for the long-term vitality of these species and interconnected cultures and people. Tribes have gen- erations of knowledge, experience, and connection to land that can help inform how to combat stressors and enhance productivity of forest foods and fibers and the health of forest ecosystems.

Conceptualizing Indigenous Cultural Ecosystem Services (ICES) and benefits under changing climate conditions in the Klamath River Basin and their implications for land management and governance

Megan Mucioki, Jennifer Sowerwine, Daniel Sarna-Wojcicki, Frank K. Lake, and Shawn Bourque

In the Klamath River Basin (KRB) of northern California and southern Oregon, climate-related changes, such as more intense droughts, varied and concentrated precipitation, earlier spring and later fall conditions, extreme temperatures, and decreased snowpack have contributed to increasingly unpredictable plant reproduction and harvest cycles. In this study, we explore contemporary relationships between plants and Indigenous People in the KRB, identifying benefits of cultural ecosystem services (CES) derived from Indigenous stewarding and gathering of culturally significant plants, and discuss how these services may change based on climate change observations and experiences. This study contributes to the conceptualization of Indigenous Cultural Ecosystem Services (ICES), providing a framework for the incorporation of Indigenous concepts, approaches, and perspectives into assessments of ecosystem services (ES) and, particularly, CES. It highlights the value of Indigenous perspectives and observations of climate change effects on plant reproduction and productivity, as well as their contribution to cultural ecosystem resilience and adaptation under changing climate conditions. We propose that incorporating Indigenous concepts and approaches to assessing CES and ES could lead to more holistic management decisions and better-informed climate adaptation initiatives with greater ES for all.

Contact

Math and Science Center, E518

400 Dowman Drive, Atlanta, GA 30322

404-727-3452

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