RAPID: Perception of and Adaptation to Extreme Flooding Disturbances in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

RAPID：对博茨瓦纳奥卡万戈三角洲极端洪水扰动的感知和适应

• 批准号: 0942211
• 负责人: Kelley Crews
• 金额: $ 2.57万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-08-01 至 2011-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0942211&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Perception; Adaptation; Extreme; Flooding

It is generally hypothesized that people's environmental perceptions are an important part of how they organize their resource evaluations, extraction patterns, and rules of access. A fundamental component of perception is uncertainty, often inversely related to residence time in a local system. Underlying this theory is the presumption that longer residence time would be sufficient for people to have observed a large portion of the range of possible environmental fluxes, and thus know how to bracket or perceive environmental change and react accordingly. Further, greater environmental variability in a given environmental system will increase uncertainty, particularly when that variability is predictable. That is, regular variability such as ocean tides may exhibit a large change, but it is a very predictable change. A more difficult scenario is where the variability exhibits non-linear behavior or appears to have frequent stochastic events. Thus hazards present a doubly difficult situation for those living on the margins: they pose both an environmental / biophysical danger but also present a cognitive challenge when those events reach outside a person's individual or shared experience.Dr. Kelley Crews from the University of Texas Austin, along with Dr. Brian King at the Pennsylvania State University will assess pre-event attitudes, perceptions, and judgments of an impending extreme flooding hazard in and around the Okavango Delta, Botswana. The crux of this research relies upon collecting people's perceptions of the impending flood prior to the flood's arrival, such that repeat interviews can be conducted post-event to see how people's prior perceptions relate to their post-event situation: did they adapt some or all livelihood strategies, did they out-migrate, or did they go on government benefits? While post-event interviews have been shown to be successful in subject recall of actual information such as "how far did the water reach in your village before you left?," they are notoriously poor at triggering accurate subject recall of their pre-event attitudes and feelings. Thus, without speaking to people pre-event, there is no way to assess any change in people's perceptions in response to such hazards or system dynamics. Gathering this information pre-event is therefore absolutely required for any further study, and will be able to be leveraged with longer-term studies by starting the data collection immediately. The findings regarding the interplay of hazards, perception, and response to extreme disturbance will be of immediate value to local decision-makers and stakeholders as well as the larger hazards and livelihoods research communities.While this study is primarily field-based, it presents an opportunity to grow education opportunities in the United States and in Botswana. This study will engage interdisciplinary students from multiple backgrounds and countries, as well as students from local college programs in Botswana. Results of this study will be made available to University of Botswana students interested in participating in the project. These educational opportunities are particularly important for females and non-BaTswana who have historically not been allowed access to educational institutions in the same proportion as other BaTswana. This project will also continue substantive interaction with local collaborators, and the status of Botswana as a contracting party to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands provides an established means of transmitting the methodological and management findings to all other signatory countries for greater international societal impact of this research on the sustainable use of wetland ecosystems prone to hazard events.

人们通常假设，人们的环境感知是他们如何组织他们的资源评估，提取模式和访问规则的重要组成部分。感知的一个基本组成部分是不确定性，通常与在当地系统中的停留时间成反比。这一理论的基础是这样一种假设，即较长的停留时间足以使人们观察到可能的环境通量范围的很大一部分，从而知道如何界定或感知环境变化并作出相应的反应。此外，在一个特定的环境系统中，更大的环境变异性将增加不确定性，特别是当这种变异性是可预测的时候。也就是说，像海洋潮汐这样的规则变化可能会表现出很大的变化，但这是一个非常可预测的变化。一个更困难的情况是，变异性表现出非线性行为或似乎有频繁的随机事件。因此，危险给生活在边缘的人带来了双重困难：它们既构成了环境/生物物理危险，也提出了认知挑战，当这些事件超出了一个人的个人或共同的经验。来自德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的凯利克鲁斯博士，沿着来自宾夕法尼亚州立大学的布赖恩金博士将评估事件发生前的态度，感知，以及对博茨瓦纳奥卡万戈三角洲及其周围地区即将发生的极端洪水灾害的判断。这项研究的关键在于收集人们的看法即将到来的洪水之前，洪水的到来，这样的重复采访可以进行事后，看看人们的事先的看法与他们的事后情况：他们是否适应一些或所有的生计策略，他们外迁，或他们去政府的福利？ 虽然事后访谈已被证明在被试回忆实际信息方面是成功的，例如“在你离开之前，你的村庄的水到达了多远？”“众所周知，他们很难准确地唤起被试对事件发生前的态度和感受的回忆。因此，如果不在事件发生前与人们交谈，就无法评估人们对这种危险或系统动态的看法的任何变化。因此，任何进一步的研究都绝对需要在活动前收集这些信息，并且可以通过立即开始数据收集来用于长期研究。关于灾害，感知和应对极端干扰的相互作用的研究结果将是直接价值的地方决策者和利益相关者，以及更大的危害和生计研究community.While这项研究主要是实地为基础的，它提供了一个机会，在美国和博茨瓦纳的教育机会增长。 这项研究将吸引来自多个背景和国家的跨学科学生，以及来自博茨瓦纳当地大学课程的学生。 这项研究的结果将提供给有兴趣参加该项目的博茨瓦纳大学学生。这些教育机会对女性和非巴托伊人特别重要，因为她们历来不被允许以与其他巴托伊人相同的比例进入教育机构。 该项目还将继续与当地合作者进行实质性互动，博茨瓦纳作为《拉姆萨尔湿地公约》缔约方的地位提供了一种既定的手段，可将方法和管理研究结果传递给所有其他签署国，以使这项研究对易发生灾害事件的湿地生态系统的可持续利用产生更大的国际社会影响。