Our grant proposal Pastoral Territoriality as a Dynamic Coupled System - Joy McCorriston (PI), Ian Hamilton and Mark Moritz - will be recommended for funding by the National Science Foundation’s Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program. The project, funded by a $1.6 million grant, is inspired by ethnographic observations of pastoralist behaviors in drylands. It aims to test whether the dynamics of woodland-grassland-woodland cycling is coupled with pastoral territorial use of grazing lands and represents a long-term, non-linear pattern with broad implications for development and sustainability of human environments. Using archaeological, ecological, geochemical, paleoclimate, and botanical methods in fieldwork, a multidisciplinary team will recover and study proxy data on ancient environments and human societies in Dhufar, Oman. The team will use agent-based models to explore the interactions of human and natural systems and to test the model of coupled dynamics with data from the field. Headed by the three Ohio State University faculty –McCorriston, Moritz, and Hamilton – the project engages senior collaborators from two US universities, two in the UK, one in Germany and from the Ministry of Heritage and Culture, Sultanate of Oman and the Oman Botanical Garden. The five-year research plan involves and trains students and new research professionals at all levels from high school through post-doctoral studies in the development of an understanding of this important human-land context.