A University of Hawaii-Manoa doctoral student has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to research deforestation in Indonesia, officials announced Wednesday.

Wendy Miles received the award for the 2011-12 academic year, the U.S. State Department and J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board said.

"The goal of my year in Indonesia will be to understand the perspectives of Indonesian people personally involved in and impacted by the evolving global carbon market — particularly local people whose livelihoods depend on the rainforests being set aside for carbon sequestration," Miles said in a UH statement Wednesday.

Indonesia’s emissions are largely the result of forest fires and deforestation, making the nation an international conservation priority.

Miles, who is originally from Kansas, worked and studied in Indonesia, which is estimated to be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States.

In 2003 Miles earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. She received her Master of Science degree in biodiversity, conservation and management from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in 2005.