HSD: Collaborative Research: Development and Resilience of Complex Socioeconomic Systems: A Theoretical Model and Case Study from the Maya Lowlands

从8,000年前开始，以行政等级、统治者和高度一体化为标志的社会在世界各地发展起来。 这一进程是间歇性的，其特点是经常出现经济失败和政治解体，在某些情况下是在气候突变的背景下出现的。 这一跨学科研究项目将为复杂的社会经济系统的出现和复原力开发一个人类-景观-气候模型，并将利用现有数据和伯利兹南部热带玛雅低地新研究的结果应用和测试该模型的预测。 该项目的主要目标是通过将定居、资源开发、农业集约化、竞争和政体稳定的过程联系起来，模拟人类对环境变化的行为反应，无论是突然的还是渐进的。 该项目旨在开发一个综合人口密度和分布、环境适宜性作为经济集约化和内在环境变化的函数以及政治剥削的一般理论模型。 第二个目标是在乌克斯本卡（Uxbenka）测试这个模型，乌克斯本卡是一个玛雅政体，形成于距今4,000年至1,500年前的伯利兹南部。 该地区的考古工作表明，在人口扩张、农业集约化、环境退化和最终分裂的背景下形成了一体化的、空间广阔的社会。 现有的古气候数据表明，降雨量的突然减少在2，100 BP至1，800 BP的某些政治解体中发挥了作用。 在这一事件之后，1800 BP之后，更复杂的社会重新整合和扩散。 其中许多在1000 BP完全崩溃，再次在气候突变的背景下。 现有的数据从一个世纪的研究在这一地区，补充新的古环境，考古和人种学调查在南部伯利兹将指导建设和评估的模型，旨在捕捉这些事件的原因。气候变化的背景下，人为引起的环境退化是一个严重的问题，面临着日益相互依存的全球社会近六十亿人。 它提出了对当代社会极为重要的困难的政策问题。 多个时间尺度上的气候变化可以引起一系列人类反应，这些反应取决于人口的分布和密度、生产方式、对环境的影响、政治整合的形式以及行政等级制度通过胁迫或意识形态操纵进行的控制。 能够将这些复杂的相互作用的一般模型是必不可少的探索复杂的社会经济系统的稳定性和脆弱性。 伯利兹南部为建立和测试这种模式以及评价有效和无效的对策所需的跨学科和经验性研究提供了经过充分研究的环境和文化背景。 沿着学术和大众出版物，研究团队将为美国和伯利兹的中小学开发教育模块，为可持续发展提供教师研讨会和社区外展，并为美国和伯利兹的大学生提供基于项目的跨学科体验。 项目数据、分析和模型将通过在线档案提供。 2008财政年度NSF范围内的人类和社会动力学（HSD）竞赛产生的一个奖项支持了这个项目。 NSF的所有董事会和办公室都参与了HSD竞赛和HSD奖项组合的协调管理。

Societies marked by administrative hierarchies, rulers, and high degrees of integration developed in multiple locations around the world beginning 8,000 years ago. The process was episodic and marked by frequent economic failure and political disintegration, in some instances in the context of abrupt climate change. This interdisciplinary research project will develop a human-landscape-climate model for the emergence and resilience of complex socioeconomic systems and will apply and test the predictions of the model with extant data and findings from new research in the tropical Maya lowlands of southern Belize. The project's primary goal is to model human behavioral responses to environmental transformation, whether abrupt or gradual, by linking together processes of settlement, resource exploitation, agricultural intensification, competition, and polity stability. The project aims to develop a general theoretical model that integrates population density and distribution, environmental suitability as a function of economic intensification and endogenous environmental change, and political exploitation. A secondary goal is to test this model at Uxbenka, a Maya polity that formed in southern Belize between from 4,000 to 1,500 years before the present (BP). Archaeological work in the region suggests that integrated, spatially extensive societies formed in the context of demographic expansion, agricultural intensification, environmental degradation, and eventual fragmentation. The available paleoclimatic data indicate that an abrupt decrease in rainfall played a role in the disintegration of certain polities from 2,100 BP to 1,800 BP. This episode was followed by the reintegration and proliferation of yet more complex societies after 1800 BP. Many of these collapsed completely at 1000 BP, again within the context of abrupt climate change. Extant data from a century of research in this region, complemented by new paleoenvironmental, archaeological, and ethnographic investigation in southern Belize will guide the construction and appraisal of models meant to capture the causes of these events.Climate change in the context of human-induced environmental degradation is an acute problem facing the increasingly interdependent global community of nearly six billion people. It presents difficult policy issues of great importance for contemporary societies. Climatic variability on multiple timescales can elicit a range of human responses that depend on the distribution and density of human populations, their modes of production, effects on environment, forms of political integration, and control via coercion or ideological manipulation by administrative hierarchies. General models capable of incorporating these complex interactions are essential for exploring the stability and vulnerability of complex socioeconomic systems. Southern Belize provides a well-researched environmental and cultural context for the interdisciplinary, empirical studies necessary to build and test such models and to appraise effective and ineffective responses. Along with academic and popular publications, the research team will develop education modules for primary and secondary schools in the U.S and Belize, provide teacher workshops and community outreach for sustainable development, and offer project-based interdisciplinary experiences for university students in the U.S. and Belize. Project data, analyses and models will be made available through an on-line archive. An award resulting from the FY 2008 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.