AVI USA Scholarships: Connecting Auroville’s Ecology to the World
With partial sponsorship from AVI USA, Andrés Acosta Calderón is completing an MSc at the University of Edinburgh, and bringing Auroville’s forests, farms and researchers into the global conversation on climate resilience.
From Auroville’s land to Edinburgh’s classrooms
Andrés brings a research background in ecosystem health, post-fire ecology, and the management of high-Andean páramos under future climate scenarios. In Auroville, he has been learning how to bridge rigorous academic theory with hands-on, locally led nature-based solutions.
Building on a BSc in Ecology, he is now a student in the MSc in Biodiversity, Wildlife and Ecosystem Health at the University of Edinburgh, where he combines field experience with rigorous academic training. This year, AVI USA provided a partial sponsorship toward the second module of his 2025–2026 program. That support kept Andrés fully enrolled and engaged in his studies, and, as his recent impact report shows, the return for Auroville has been remarkable.
A farm as a living laboratory
One of the most direct outcomes of this period is a new research project at AuroOrchard, the organic farm that has worked Auroville’s land since 1968. Andrés is leading it with Anshul Aggarwal, a PhD researcher at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
The study
Farms as Biodiversity Refugia: A DPSIR Case Study of Climate Resilience and Agrobiodiversity Conservation on a Tropical Indian Coast
It asks how climate change is reshaping the farm, and what the farm’s responses can teach others across the region.
The pressure to adapt to climate change is palpable in India. In 2025, the country recorded extreme weather on 270 of 273 monitored days, with crop losses across 9.47 million hectares. On the Coromandel Coast, a short monsoon from October to December gives way to a long, hot dry season.
The study applies the DPSIR framework (Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact, Response), a method Andrés has refined through his MSc. In the current phase, the team will:
- sample soil at five plots, once after the monsoon and again at the peak of the dry season;
- track rainfall and aquifer data; and
- invite farm staff, volunteers and workshop participants to record birds, pollinators and wildlife through a shared iNaturalist project.
Drawing on GIS skills from his MSc, Andrés created a precise KML boundary file that defines AuroOrchard as a custom place within iNaturalist, the platform run by the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic. This means every biodiversity observation is accurately mapped and tied to the study’s research goals. He is now offering to set up the same system for other iNaturalist projects in Auroville, so that observations across the community can be mapped just as accurately.
From Andrés’s workshop
Mapping Biodiversity: A Participatory Science Approach
How anyone can help map AuroOrchard’s wildlife with iNaturalist, and how the DPSIR framework turns those observations into climate-resilience research.
Explore Andrés’s work
The iNaturalist workshop and biodiversity walk at AuroOrchard.
Andrés expects to find that the farm’s shaded, high-biomass practices, such as its syntropic orchard, help buffer heat and drought. The project aims to produce a peer-reviewed paper, an open biodiversity dataset, and a monitoring template that other small farms in the Villupuram bioregion can adopt.
Andrés also used frameworks from his MSc to assess JOI Anitya initiatives in Auroville against the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions, an internationally recognized benchmark for this kind of work.
Opening doors for Auroville researchers
Andrés is using his growing academic network to lift up the work of others in Auroville.
Open Journal of Biodiversity & Ecosystems
As a member of the editorial board, he has invited Auroville-based researchers, including Anshul Aggarwal and staff of the Botanical Gardens, to submit their work to this international, open-access journal hosted by the University of Edinburgh.
British Ecological Society
As Chair of the BES Forest Ecology Special Interest Group, he has organized webinars featuring Auroville experts, including Nature-Based Pathways for Greener and Resilient Cities, and invited Auroville practitioners to share their work in the group’s seasonal newsletters.
Auroville’s forests in the scientific record
Andrés has also written a report on the resilience of Tropical Dry Evergreen Forests (TDEFs), the forest type Auroville has worked for decades to restore. Drawing on botanical surveys and ecological studies, the report traces how these forests have persisted through compound extreme events and severe fragmentation, and identifies traits that help them survive.
Impact beyond Auroville
The benefits of this sponsorship reach well past Auroville’s borders. During this period, Andrés:
- joined the editorial board of the Open Journal of Biodiversity & Ecosystems, helping oversee the publication of its first volume;
- published a study applying the DPSIR framework to Colombia’s páramo ecosystems in the Open Journal of Biodiversity & Ecosystems (2026); and
- began a global research project, a systematic review with quantitative analysis, on how quickly climate change is pushing ecoregions upslope across tropical mountain ecosystems.
“Grateful to AVI USA for its support.”
Andrés Acosta Calderón, impact report
Why your support matters
A single, modest grant helped keep one dedicated scholar in his program, and in turn created new links between Auroville’s ecological community and international research.
This is what your gifts to AVI USA make possible: people rooted in Auroville, equipped to carry its work into the wider world.
Support AVI USA scholarships
Help more people rooted in Auroville carry its work into the world. Gifts are tax-deductible in the US.