Issues and Concepts in Pastoral Ecology and Dry Tropical Ecosystems

南图尔卡纳生态系统项目（STEP）是一项长期、跨学科的生态系统研究，旨在研究肯尼亚北部Ngisonyoka图尔卡纳游牧民族及其与干旱热带草原/林地生态系统的相互作用。STEP在20世纪80年代早期的最初目标是确定Ngisonyoka牧民如何在一个干旱和干旱的生态系统中，在猖獗的盗匪和部落间的战争中，仅依靠他们的传统技术，设法生存和坚持下去。在过去的十年中，该项目进行了一系列关于景观、植被、牲畜和人的研究。项目团队现在将进行为期两年的研究-综合阶段，目的是将围绕生态系统水平概念或工作过程中出现的特定问题的不同学科研究的结果汇总和综合。通过整合围绕重要问题和概念的实地和建模工作的结果，预计该小组将(1)证明人类生态学，生物学和社会的研究可以整合到生态系统科学中；(2)表明将气候研究、生态系统分析和社会科学纳入一个单一的调查和建模框架是可行的；(3)为干旱热带生态系统的结构和动态提供了一些新的见解，最重要的是；(4)对游牧民族的生态、生物、社会和资源开发策略及其与生态系统的相互作用进行了整体描述。

The South Turkana Ecosystem Project (STEP) is a long-term, interdisciplinary ecosystem-oriented study of Ngisonyoka Turkana pastoral nomads and their interactions with a dry savanna/woodland ecosystem in Northern Kenya. The initial objective of STEP in the early 1980s was to determine how Ngisonyoka pastoralists, with only their traditional technology, managed to survive and persist in a dry and drought-stressed ecosystem, in the midst of rampant banditry and inter-tribal warfare. Over the last ten years the project has conducted a number of studies on landscapes, vegetation, livestock, and people. The project team will now perform research-synthesis phase of two years duration for the purpose of pulling together and synthesizing the results of the diverse disciplinary studies around ecosystem level concepts or particular issues that have arisen during the course of the work. By integrating the results of field and modeling work around important issues and concepts it is expected that the group will (1) demonstrate that studies of human ecology, biology and society can be integrated into ecosystem science; (2) show that it is feasible to incorporate climate studies, ecosystem analyses, and social science within a single investigatory and modeling framework; (3) provide several new insights into the structure and dynamics of dry tropical ecosystems and, most importantly; (4) present a holistic portrait of the ecology of pastoral nomads, their biological, social, and resource exploitation strategies, and their interactions with their ecosystem.