This IRES project engages U.S. undergraduate and graduate students in research on the long-term climate and environmental history and resilience of the Afromontane forests of the Usambara Mountains in northeastern Tanzania, an area widely known as a global biodiversity hotspot, rich with plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth. However, changing rainfall patterns, urban development, and expanding agriculture are endangering the mountain ecosystems. This IRES project gives participating students the opportunity to explore how these forests have responded to past environmental changes to better understand future impacts. Through research experiences with scientists in the United States, Tanzania, and Germany, participating students are helping to reconstruct the region’s long-term ecological history and develop conservation plans for the forests. Under the leadership of Bryant University, in collaboration with Tanzanian and German researchers, this IRES project investigates the ecological history of the Usambara Mountains to reveal past forest responses and inform potential future resilience. Through the student research activities, U.S. students receive preparatory training at Bryant, conduct fieldwork and sediment core sampling in Tanzania in collaboration with the University of Dar es Salaam, and laboratory analysis in Germany at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. This project is the first effort to retrieve Early-to-Mid Holocene, and possibly even