Abdul-Salam is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at Penn State University. He is a human-environment geographer with broad interests in human-environment interactions, natural resource management, planning, and sustainable development. He draws on fields related to understanding socio-ecological systems and human adaptation to global environmental change to research issues in agrarian systems in Africa’s drylands including climate change adaptation, agrarian livelihoods, biodiversity conservation, and natural resource management. Specifically, his research focuses on how to strengthen the adaptation and resilience of agrarian systems to climate change, with an emphasis on how a complex mix of social, political-economic, and environmental conditions in African drylands shapes adaptation and natural-resource-based livelihoods in agrarian systems.
Prior to joining the Department of Geography at Penn State University, he completed his Master of Arts (MA) degree in Geography at Ohio University. For his master's degree, he examined farmers’ and herders’ emerging livelihood diversification patterns and how these livelihood changes shape their interdependence and adaptation processes. Abdul-Salam also holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Development Planning from the Department of Planning at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.