HSD: Paleoclimatic Change, Landscape Evolution, and Cultural Transformations in Far Western Tibet from 2,500 Years Before the Present to the Present

今天生活在喜马拉雅和跨喜马拉雅国家的40多亿人依靠亚洲夏季风维持生计。季风降雨的时间、数量和地点的中断可能严重影响这些人的生计，并造成广泛的经济、社会和健康问题。不幸的是，对季风变化和人类机构反应之间联系的基本了解不够全面，这主要是因为缺乏关于季风变化的长期工具记录和描述该区域人民如何应对这种变化的历史文件。有可能对这一问题有重大洞察力的一种方法是历史生态学，这是一种寻求同时获得气候变化数据和人类在长时间框架内对气候变化反应的研究方向。在这个研究项目中，一个由古环境科学、地貌学、考古学和档案学研究人员组成的多学科研究小组将研究公元1300年前后亚洲季风强度突然发生突变的原因和后果。该项目将把重点放在西藏的最西部，这一转变被认为导致了该地区人民赖以生存的经济发生了重大变化，包括饥荒、移民和政治经济的重大变化。该项目将彻底审查季风变化背后的原因，并全面记录人类机构对不同时间尺度上季风强度和特征变化作出的各种反应(从家庭到区域政治)。该项目将加强对自然气候变化以及这种变化对人类机构的影响的基本了解。虽然这个项目的重点是西藏，但它将为整个喜马拉雅地区气候系统和人民之间的长期互动提供新的见解。该项目将通过在美国、中国和西藏的大学、学科和研究人员之间建立新的伙伴关系来促进教学、培训和学习。它将通过本科生和研究生的参与将研究和教育结合起来。每个项目组长将鼓励参与项目的学生直接参与项目的各个方面，包括实地研究，从而使他们能够获得比仅在单一学科内工作更丰富的经验。2005财年NSF人类和社会动力学竞赛(HSD)颁发的奖项支持这一项目。NSF的所有董事和办公室都参与了HSD竞赛和HSD奖项组合的协调管理。

The more than four billion people who live today in the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan nations depend upon the Asian summer monsoon for their livelihood. Disruptions in the timing, amount, and location of monsoon rainfall can seriously affect the livelihood of these people and create widespread economic, social, and health-related problems. Unfortunately, basic understanding of the linkages between monsoon variability and human institutional response is less comprehensive than is desirable primarily because of a paucity of long-term instrumental records of monsoon variability and historical documents that describe how the peoples of the region have coped with this variability. One approach that offers the potential to develop significant insights into this problem is historical ecology, a research orientation that seeks to obtain simultaneously data on climate change and human response to it over long time frames. In this research project, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the paleoenvironmental science, geomorphology, archaeology, and archival studies will the study the causes and consequences of a hypothesized abrupt shift in the intensity of the Asian monsoon around AD 1300. This project will focus on far western Tibet, a region where this shift is believed to have led to significant changes in the subsistence economies of the peoples of the region, including famine, migrations, and major changes in political economy. This project will undertake a thorough examination of the causal forces behind monsoon variability as well as a comprehensive documentation of the variety of responses made by human institutions (ranging in scale from the household to the regional polity) to variation in monsoon intensity and character at different temporal scales. The project will enhance basic understanding of both natural climate variability and the impact of this variability on human institutions. Although focusing on Tibet, this project will provide new insights into long-term interaction between climate systems and people throughout the Himalayan region. The project will promote teaching, training and learning by building new partnerships among universities, disciplines, and researchers in the United States, China and Tibet. It will integrate both research and education through the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students. Each project team leader will encourage participating students to work directly with every aspect of the project, including field research, thus enabling them to obtain a richer experience than would be possible by working only within a single discipline. An award resulting from the FY 2005 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.