Biocomplexity Incubation Activity: Integration of Spatial, Ecological, and Environmental Social Science Methods for the Study of Biodiversity and Biocomplexity

正在进行的对人类和自然系统之间复杂相互作用的研究表明，社会科学和自然科学之间需要更频繁和更有凝聚力的交流。该生物复杂性孵化活动奖将支持一个项目，该项目包括一系列研讨会和其他活动，旨在整合生态学家和社会科学家对环境变化及其对生物复杂性的影响的研究，生态学家通常致力于种群动态的空间显式模型，社会科学家倾向于研究人类改变环境的社会、经济和制度基础。该项目将包括两个讲习班。每个研讨会将持续三至五天，将有30至45人参加；其中包括人数大致相同的生态学家和社会科学家。第一期讲习班将围绕初步模型的构建和必须解决的问题进行探索，以便将生态学和社会科学的见解和工作方法结合起来。初步模型将在接下来的一年里在一系列研究生研讨会上开发和测试。将开发基于网络的材料，以保持参与者之间的联系。第二次研讨会的很大一部分时间将致力于准备进一步研究生物复杂性和生物多样性的建议。生态学家和环境社会科学家一直在讨论相关问题，尽管他们强调了不同的研究问题，并使用了不同的模型和方法。尽管这两个领域的研究传统不同，但它们已经达到了在一系列研讨会上进行密集互动的阶段，应该会非常富有成效。这两个组织都非常关注栖息地的破坏或转变，这是一系列可能对生物多样性构成最大威胁的过程。这两个小组还以使空间过程变得明确和重要的方式处理了这些过程。在生态学家中，空间已经成为生态过程理论模型逻辑中极其重要的组成部分。在社会科学家中，空间框架已成为收集和组织有关环境变化的信息的关键基础。这个项目将利用这些共同关注的栖息地破坏和空间显式建模来开发一套研究项目，整合生态学家和环境社会科学家的工作。

Ongoing research examining the complex interactions among human and natural systems have demonstrated the need for more frequent and cohesive communication among social and natural sciences. This Biocomplexity Incubation Activity award will support a project that consists of a series of workshops and other activities designed to integrate research on environmental change and its effects on biocomplexity being carried out by ecologists, who generally work on spatially explicit models of population dynamics, and social scientists, who tend to do research on the social, economic and institutional bases for human modification of environments. The project will involve two workshops. Each workshop will run for three to five days and will involve 30 to 45 participants; including roughly equal numbers of ecologists and social scientists. The first workshop will center on the construction of preliminary models and the exploration of issues that have to be resolved in order to integrate the insights and working methods of ecology and social science. Preliminary models will be developed and tested over the following year in a sequence of graduate seminars. Web-based materials will be developed to maintain contact among the participants. A substantial portion of the second workshop will be devoted to preparing proposals for further research on biocomplexity and biodiversity.Ecologists and environmental social scientists have been addressing related issues although they have emphasized different research questions and have used dissimilar models and methods. Despite their differences in research traditions, these two fields have reached a stage where intensive interactions in a series of workshops should be very fruitful. Both groups have been heavily concerned with the destruction or transformation of habitat, a set of processes that probably pose the greatest threat to biodiversity. Both groups have also addressed these processes in ways that make spatial processes explicit and important. Among ecologists, space has become an extremely important component in the logic of theoretical models of ecological processes. Among social scientists, spatial frameworks have become crucial as basis for gathering and organizing information about environmental change. This project will use these common concerns with habitat destruction and spatially explicit modeling to develop a set of research projects that integrate the work of ecologists and environmental social scientists.