DMUU: Management of Ecosystems in the US Southwest and Related Areas of Northern Mexico in the Context of Complex Uncertainties

气候、生态和社会变化正在对美国西南部和墨西哥北部产生重大影响，但人们对正在发生的复杂变化知之甚少。同时，在生物物理和社会不确定的条件下，为改进决策作出重大贡献的潜力很大。将举行两个讲习班来处理这些问题。讲习班的参与者将包括来自学术界、政府和非政府组织的主要研究人员，他们在该地区的生物物理和/或社会过程和系统方面具有专门知识。第一次讲习班将确定主要问题，并为讲习班参与者小组编写的一套论文选择主题。这些论文将总结特定专题领域的科学知识现状，并将提供有关关键研究和决策支持需求的信息。还将出版一份会议记录文件，对讲习班进行总结。第二次研讨会将审查第一次研讨会产生的论文，并优先考虑一系列可行的研究、教育和外展活动。第二次讲习班的摘要文件以及主要出版物和其他信息来源的参考书目将在网上公布。讲习班将讨论该地区的一个关键问题，即如何在多重压力源和对该地区发生的生物物理和社会变化的性质和影响高度不确定的背景下协调人们的不同活动和愿望。美国西南部的生物物理和社会系统，从边境延伸到墨西哥北部，正在以多种方式展示这些压力源的结果。从仪器气候记录中可以清楚地看出，十多年来年平均气温的显著上升，而古记录表明，这种上升的急剧程度实际上是前所未有的。与此同时，该地区具有高度的气候变率，最关键的是降水和相关的水资源可得性在空间上的变化，以及从一个季节、一年和十年到下一个季节的变化。伴随着这些生物物理趋势的是该区域人口的迅速增长、城市的蔓延、第二和第三家园的郊区发展、对美洲土著土地和对他们和该地区其他文化群体重要的文化/宗教场所的压力、该区域最美丽地区的高度活动和对旅游业的经济依赖、军事活动以及毒品贩运者和非法移民的跨界流动。解决这些问题需要高水平的科学跨学科，与利益相关者建立有效的伙伴关系，并致力于开发决策支持工具，这些工具对于解决存在的许多问题既可用又有用。这两个研讨会为实现这些目标提供了一个起点。该发展奖是2003财政年度人类和社会动态优先领域不确定决策特别竞赛的一部分。

Climatic, ecological, and societal changes are having major effects on the US Southwest and northern Mexico, but the complex changes that are occurring are poorly understood. At the same time, the potential is high for making significant contributions to improved decision making under conditions of biophysical and societal uncertainty. Two workshops will be held to address these issues. Workshop participants will include key researchers from academia, government, and non-governmental organizations who have expertise in biophysical and/or societal processes and systems in the region. The first workshop will identify the major issues and select themes for a set of papers to be written by a subgroup of workshop participants. These papers will summarize the status of scientific knowledge in the specified thematic areas and will provide information about crucial research and decision-support needs. A proceedings document also will be published that summarizes the workshop. The second workshop will review the papers produced from the first workshop and prioritize a series of viable research, education, and outreach activities. Summary documents from the second workshop will be published on the web, as well as a bibliography of key publications and other information sources.The workshops will address a critical issue in the region, how to harmonize people's disparate activities and aspirations in the context of multiple stressors and high levels of uncertainty about nature and implications of biophysical and societal changes occurring in the area. Biophysical and societal systems in the US Southwest, which stretch across the border into northern Mexico, are showing the results of these stressors in many ways. A marked increase in average annual temperatures over more than a decade is clearly discernible in the instrumental climate record, and paleo records indicate that the steepness of the increase is virtually unprecedented. At the same time, the region features a high degree of climatic variability, most crucially with regard to variations in precipitation and related availability of water resources over space and from one season, year, and decade to the next. These biophysical trends are accompanied by rapid population growth in the region, urban sprawl, exurban development of second and third homes, pressure on Native American lands and on cultural/religious sites important to them and other cultural groups in the area, high levels of activity and economic dependency on tourism in the most beautiful areas of the region, military activities, and transboundary flows of drug traffickers and illegal migrants. Solving these problems requires high levels of scientific interdisciplinarity, development of effective partnerships with stakeholders, and commitment to developing decision support tools that are both usable and useful for addressing the many issues that exist. The two workshops provide a jumping-off point for achieving these ends. This developmental award was supported as part of the Fiscal Year 2003 Human and Social Dynamics priority area special competition on Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU).