PIRE: Land Use, Ecosystem Services and the Fate of Marginal Lands in a Globalized World

PIRE：全球化世界中的土地利用、生态系统服务和边缘土地的命运

• 批准号: 0968211
• 负责人: Christopher Neill
• 金额: $ 120万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0968211&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PIRE; Land; Use; Ecosystem; Services

One of humanity's greatest contemporary challenges is producing enough food to sustain human populations in developing regions while preserving naturally-functioning habitats that provide key ecosystem services such as clean drinking water, biodiversity, carbon storage, and climate moderation. This PIRE project leverages substantial existing investments in Africa by the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) to mount an international and interdisciplinary study of this great challenge. One of the goals of the MVP is to increase food security by providing local populations in 14 Millennium Villages (MVs) with agricultural interventions such as mineral fertilizers and high-yield seeds. This PIRE project builds upon the MVP's rigorous ongoing evaluation of responses to this agricultural intensification and adds a new dimension of analysis by examining the impacts of the agricultural intensification on land use decisions, human well-being, and ecosystem services at the local and landscape levels. This project focuses on two MVs, in Sauri, Kenya and Mbola, Tanzania. It also incorporates the wealth of data, including survey and field measurements and analyses of remotely sensed imagery, from all 14 MVs across Africa. There are three main experimental components of this project. First, the PIRE team will examine how agricultural intensification acts within communities using indicators such as land-use change, human well-being, ecosystem function, and biodiversity. Second, they will analyze the larger MVP dataset to examine how population density, degree of landscape modification, and climate influence responses to agricultural intensification. Third, for a subset of MVs and nearby non-MV "control" villages, the team will take measurements of ecosystem function and analyze the impacts of agricultural intensification over time. Faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from the U.S. and African universities will study both the social and biological consequences of the MVP agricultural interventions. The interdisciplinary expertise of the PIRE team will enable the team to, for example, combine social survey data with satellite remote sensing data to test whether agriculture intensification within MVs actually "saves land for nature" by changing behaviors such that outside the villages there is reduced agricultural activity and reduced conversion of natural areas to agriculture. The project aims to create a multi-institutional, multinational, and interdisciplinary educational environment for students and faculty from three U.S. institutions and two African institutions. Cross-cultural mentoring and collaboration is a focus for participants at all levels, benefitting U.S. and African students and faculty. Approximately 50 U.S. undergraduate and Masters students will receive scientific training through core courses, field courses, workshops, and internships. U.S. Ph.D. students will be supported for MVP-focused research theses projects and receive language training in Swahili before spending substantial time in East Africa collaborating with African partners. Project faculty will develop a new interdisciplinary and international course on the "Natural and Social Dynamics of Land-Use Change" using data from Africa and engaging African faculty and students. The project will provide U.S. students with international and interdisciplinary research training in the context of sustaining food production and ecosystem services in developing countries. By examining the impact of MV interventions on people and the environment, the project will provide information that could guide future policies for enhancing human wellbeing, food security, and environmental conservation in one of the world's most impoverished regions.This PIRE project will draw upon the individual strengths of the U.S. and African universities and combine them with several existing African research networks to form research and education networks ideally positioned to conduct this interdisciplinary research. The U.S. institutions will also benefit because the project will give both senior and junior faculty invaluable international experience in designing and conducting a large multinational research project, in training students via international collaboration, and in managing the logistics of a complex project in Africa. The PIRE project will also improve access to international research experiences for U.S. students from groups underrepresented in science via collaborations with the Leadership Alliance (RI), Dillard University (LA), and the Ecological Society of America's Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability (SEEDS) program.This PIRE is a partnership among Brown University (RI), The Earth Institute of Columbia University (NY), The Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MA) and foreign partners at the Moi University (Kenya) and Sokoine University (Tanzania).This project is supported by the NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering, the Division of Environmental Biology, and NSF's EPSCoR Program.

人类当前面临的最大挑战之一是，在生产足够的粮食以维持发展中地区人口的同时，保护具有自然功能的栖息地，这些栖息地提供清洁饮用水、生物多样性、碳储存和气候调节等关键生态系统服务。该项目利用千年村项目（MVP）在非洲的大量现有投资，对这一重大挑战进行国际和跨学科研究。MVP的目标之一是通过向14个千年村（MVs）的当地人口提供矿物肥料和高产种子等农业干预措施来增加粮食安全。该项目建立在MVP对这种农业集约化反应的严格持续评估的基础上，并通过检查农业集约化对土地利用决策、人类福祉和生态系统服务在地方和景观层面的影响，增加了一个新的分析维度。这个项目的重点是两个mv，分别在肯尼亚的绍里和坦桑尼亚的姆博拉。它还整合了来自非洲所有14个mv的大量数据，包括调查和实地测量以及遥感图像分析。这个项目有三个主要的实验组成部分。首先，该小组将利用土地利用变化、人类福祉、生态系统功能和生物多样性等指标，研究农业集约化如何在社区内发挥作用。其次，他们将分析更大的MVP数据集，以检查人口密度、景观改造程度和气候对农业集约化的影响。第三，对于一小部分mv和附近的非mv“控制”村庄，该团队将测量生态系统功能，并分析农业集约化的影响。来自美国和非洲大学的教师、研究生和本科生将研究MVP农业干预的社会和生物后果。该项目小组的跨学科专业知识将使该小组能够，例如，将社会调查数据与卫星遥感数据结合起来，以测试mv内部的农业集约化是否通过改变行为，从而减少村庄以外的农业活动和减少自然地区向农业的转化，实际上“为自然节省土地”。该项目旨在为来自三所美国机构和两所非洲机构的学生和教师创造一个多机构、多国和跨学科的教育环境。跨文化指导和协作是各级参与者关注的焦点，使美国和非洲的学生和教师受益。大约50名美国本科生和硕士生将通过核心课程、实地课程、研讨会和实习接受科学培训。美国博士生将获得以mvp为重点的研究论文项目的支持，并在花大量时间在东非与非洲伙伴合作之前接受斯瓦希里语的语言培训。项目教师将利用非洲的数据，并让非洲教师和学生参与，开发一门新的跨学科国际课程，主题是“土地利用变化的自然和社会动态”。该项目将为美国学生提供在发展中国家维持粮食生产和生态系统服务方面的国际和跨学科研究培训。通过研究农业干预对人类和环境的影响，该项目将提供信息，指导未来在世界上最贫困地区之一加强人类福祉、粮食安全和环境保护的政策。该项目将利用美国和非洲大学的各自优势，并将它们与几个现有的非洲研究网络结合起来，形成研究和教育网络，理想地定位于开展这种跨学科研究。美国院校也将受益，因为该项目将使高级和初级教师在设计和实施大型跨国研究项目、通过国际合作培训学生以及管理非洲复杂项目的后勤方面获得宝贵的国际经验。该项目还将通过与领导力联盟（RI）、迪拉德大学（LA）和美国生态学会的生态教育、多样性和可持续性战略（SEEDS）项目合作，改善来自科学领域代表性不足群体的美国学生获得国际研究经验的机会。该项目由布朗大学（RI）、哥伦比亚大学地球研究所（NY）、海洋生物实验室生态系统中心（MA）以及莫伊大学（肯尼亚）和索科因大学（坦桑尼亚）的外国合作伙伴合作完成。该项目由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室、环境生物学部和美国国家科学基金会EPSCoR项目支持。