Frontiers in Sustainability Science: Biofuels as a Critical Test

该提案支持举办一次研讨会，审议美国农业生态系统和受管理的自然生态系统生产生物燃料的可持续性。讲习班最一般的目标是利用生物燃料生产带来的挑战，促进可持续发展科学的进步，重点放在理论框架和分析工具上。研讨会将强调这一问题的跨学科性质，将生物学家、经济学家、社会科学家和工程师聚集在一起。评估美国生物燃料生产的可持续性面临的最大挑战之一是开发分析工具和模型，以便在技术和环境可能发生快速变化的情况下重新评估可持续性。推动生物燃料生产和更广泛的可持续科学研究，将需要在开发跨不同学科的预测模型能力方面取得重大新进展。讲习班有可能促进新的跨学科合作，以提高科学界评估各种人类活动的可持续性的能力。鉴于生物燃料生产的发展速度非常之快，研讨会的重点是生物燃料生产的可持续性，具有重要的公共政策影响。研讨会将侧重于如何提高公众对可持续性各方面的理解，以及与生物燃料生产可持续性有关的具体问题。研讨会的具体目标之一是就如何促进可持续性分析基础方面的进展向国家科学基金会提出建议。

This proposal supports a workshop to consider the sustainability of biofuel production from both agricultural ecosystems and managed natural ecosystems in the United States. The most general goal of the workshop is to use the challenges presented by biofuel production to stimulate advances in the science of sustainability, focusing on both theoretical frameworks and analytical tools. The workshop will stress the interdisciplinary nature of the issue, bringing together biologists, economists, social scientists, and engineers. One of the greatest challenges in assessing the sustainability of biofuel production in the U.S. lies in developing analytical tools and models that allow reassessment of sustainability in the face of potentially rapid change in both technology and the environment. Advancing research in biofuel production and in sustainability science more generally will require significant new developments in the ability to develop predictive models that integrate across diverse disciplines.The workshop has the potential to stimulate new interdisciplinary collaboration to improve the ability of the scientific community to assess the sustainability of a wide range of human activities. The focus of the workshop on the subject of the sustainability of biofuel production has important public policy implications, given the extraordinary pace of developments in this area. The workshop will focus on approaches to improving public understanding of the dimensions of sustainability, and the specific issues associated with sustainability of biofuel production. One of the workshop's specific goals is to provide recommendations to NSF on ways to foster advances in the foundations for analysis of sustainability.