Critical Zones in Global Environmental Change

人类活动改变自然过程的方式 环境变化及其对人类的影响 并不是均匀地分布在地球仪上。 由于特殊 人类和自然属性的结合，一些地区是 特别是倾向于加速变化的过程， 人与环境的相互作用 这个项目将开始 建立一个方法框架， 人类与环境相互作用的比较研究， 被评估为局势特别危急的世界 --墨西哥盆地、亚马逊盆地的一部分、北海、咸海 海和喜马拉雅山的一部分。 案例研究将在 每一个地方，以确定和评估人类的力量， 正在改变环境变化的自然过程， 社会对这些影响的认识，以及 应对这些变化。 将采用共同的研究方法， 所有案例研究，以确保结果的可比性。 这项工作将 由一个由学者组成的中央研究小组协调， 技能和国际顾问委员会，但大部分 研究将由基于并熟悉每个领域的学者进行 的研究领域。 该研究还将与相关的 国际地理学联合会研究小组的活动。 这项研究将为一系列重要的 人与环境相互作用的密集比较案例研究 在世界的五个关键地区。 这项研究始于 分析阶段，并可能在未来几年继续进行， 为人类和自然过程提供了重要的新见解， 研究领域本身，但更重要的是，研究将 提供关于全球模式和进程的可推广的知识， 人类对自然环境变化的影响和反应。 的 这项研究还将建立一个框架，供其他地区效仿 以进一步增进对这一重要议题的理解。

The ways in which human activities are altering natural processes of environmental change and the impacts of that change on humans are not evenly distributed across the globe. Because of special combinations of human and natural attributes, some locales are especially prone toward accelerated processes of change induced by human-environmental interactions. This project will begin the establishment of a methodological framework for the systematic, comparative study of human-environmental interactions in five parts of the world where the situation has been assessed as especially critical -- the Mexico Basin, part of the Amazon basin, the North Sea, the Aral Sea, and a part of the Himalayas. Case studies will be undertaken in each of these locales to identify and evaluate the human forces that are altering natural processes of environmental change, the growing societal awareness of these impacts, and the nature of societal responses to those changes. Common research approaches will be used in all case studies to ensure comparability of results. The work will be coordinated by a central research team of scholars with complementary skills and by an international board of advisors, but much of the research will be conducted by scholars based in and familiar with each of study areas. The research also will be coordinated with related activities of study groups of the International Geographic Union. This research will lay the groundwork for an important series of intensive, comparative case studies of human-environmental interaction in five critical parts of the world. The research beginning in this phase of the analysis and likely to continue in future years will provide significant new insights about human and natural processes in the study areas themselves, but more importantly, the research will provide generalizable knowledge about global patterns and processes of human impacts on and responses to natural environmental change. The study will also establish a framework for replication in other locales in order to further increase understandings about this critical topic.