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

以行政等级、统治者和高度融合为标志的社会从8000年前开始在世界各地的多个地方发展起来。这个过程是断断续续的，以频繁的经济失败和政治解体为特征，在某些情况下是在气候突然变化的背景下。这一跨学科研究项目将为复杂社会经济系统的出现和恢复力开发一个人类-景观-气候模型，并将利用伯利兹南部热带玛雅低地的现有数据和新研究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、竞争和政治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。该项目旨在建立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生环境变化的功能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）对这个模型进行测试。乌克斯本卡是玛雅人在距今4000年至1500年前形成于伯利兹南部的一个政体。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，形成了空间上广泛的综合社会。现有的古气候资料表明，在2100 ~ 1800 BP期间，降雨量的突然减少对某些政治制度的瓦解起了作用。这一时期之后，在公元前1800年之后，出现了更复杂的社会的重新融合和扩散。其中许多在1000 BP完全崩溃，同样是在气候突变的背景下。该地区一个世纪以来研究的现有数据，加上伯利兹南部新的古环境、考古和人种学调查，将指导旨在捕捉这些事件原因的模型的构建和评估。在人类活动导致环境退化的背景下，气候变化是近60亿人口日益相互依存的全球社会面临的一个严峻问题。它提出了对当代社会非常重要的困难的政策问题。气候在多个时间尺度上的变化会引发一系列人类反应，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、政治一体化的形式，以及行政等级通过强制或意识形态操纵进行的控制。能够纳入这些复杂相互作用的一般模型对于探索复杂社会经济系统的稳定性和脆弱性至关重要。伯利兹南部为建立和检验这种模式以及评价有效和无效的反应所必需的跨学科、经验性研究提供了经过充分研究的环境和文化背景。除了学术和大众出版物外，研究小组还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讲习班和社区外展，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、分析和模型将通过联机档案提供。由2008财年nsf人类与社会动力学（HSD）竞赛产生的奖项支持该项目。所有NSF理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.