CNH: Does Community-Based Rangeland Ecosystem Management Increase the Resilience of Coupled Systems to Climate Change in Mongolia?

CNH：基于社区的牧场生态系统管理是否增强了蒙古耦合系统对气候变化的适应能力？

• 批准号: 1011801
• 负责人: Maria Fernandez-Gimenez
• 金额: $ 149.97万
• 依托单位: Colorado State 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: 2010-10-01 至 2015-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1011801&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CNH; Does; Community; Based; Rangeland

Sustainable use and stewardship of natural resources is essential to the long-term persistence of human societies and the natural world. Understanding the interdependent behavior of social and natural systems and the factors that affect how these linked systems respond to sudden natural or political-economic shocks or ongoing stresses is a major challenge for science. Resilience is the ability of a system to absorb or adapt to change without altering its basic parts and functions. An important line of research therefore is to investigate the resilience of coupled human-natural systems in the face of major stresses and to understand how environmental governance, including both formal policies and informal institutions, affects resilience. Previously developed theories suggest that local resource-management institutions may contribute to resilience and enable communities to adapt more successfully to climate change. Mongolia is an ideal place to test this theory because it has experienced one of the most significant warming trends on Earth over the past 40 years. Furthermore, more than 2,000 community-based rangeland management organizations have formed in Mongolia since 1999, an unprecedented social experiment that creates an opportunity for rigorous policy learning. This interdisciplinary research project will assess the vulnerability of Mongolian pastoral social-ecological systems to climate change, evaluate the effects of community-based rangeland management on the resilience of Mongolian pastoral systems, strengthen linkages between science and policy making in Mongolia, and build the capacity of participating Mongolian and U.S. researchers and students to analyze the dynamics of complex coupled natural-human systems. The investigators will use a range of methods in this project, include remote sensing and climate and hydrological modeling to assess changes in climate and land use over time and the effects of those changes on rangeland hydrology and productivity. They will use observational approaches like interviews, household surveys, and plant and livestock field sampling to compare ecological, social, and resilience indicators in districts with community-based management and those without, and they will conduct targeted grazing removal experiments to improve understanding of the relative importance of weather and grazing in determining pasture conditions in different ecological zones. Data will be analyzed and integrated using a combination of statistics, statistical and process modeling, and geospatial 3-D visualization techniques. The project will educate and train graduate students and secondary school teachers in the U.S. and Mongolia and will directly involve stakeholders and policy makers through participatory system modeling and scenario planning workshops.By examining the performance and outcomes of community-based institutions in rangelands using a large-sample, case-control design that accounts for variation in ecological and regional contexts, this project will contribute significantly to basic understanding of community-based rangeland management institutions in Mongolia and elsewhere. The project will make methodological contributions by evaluating the effects of community-based management across multiple scales and by integrating physical, ecological and social sampling and data analysis at each scale, thereby advancing understanding of cross-scale dynamics in complex systems. The results of this project will have significant implications for environmental policy in Mongolia and elsewhere, and they will benefit stakeholders like herders, and policy makers through their engagement in participatory-modeling and scenario-planning workshops. The project will have relevance for a broad range of arid and semiarid rangelands around the globe where pastoralists and policy makers are seeking ways to cope with a changing climate and develop management institutions that build resilience and promote sustainability in dryland systems. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program and by the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.

自然资源的可持续利用和管理对于人类社会和自然界的长期持续至关重要。 了解社会和自然系统的相互依赖行为以及影响这些关联系统如何应对突发自然或政治经济冲击或持续压力的因素是科学的主要挑战。 复原力是指一个系统在不改变其基本部分和功能的情况下吸收或适应变化的能力。 因此，一个重要的研究方向是调查在重大压力面前人-自然耦合系统的复原力，并了解环境治理，包括正式政策和非正式机构，如何影响复原力。 先前发展的理论表明，地方资源管理机构可能有助于提高复原力，使社区能够更成功地适应气候变化。 蒙古是检验这一理论的理想之地，因为它在过去40年里经历了地球上最显著的变暖趋势之一。 此外，自1999年以来，蒙古成立了2 000多个社区牧场管理组织，这是一项前所未有的社会试验，为严格的政策学习创造了机会。 该跨学科研究项目将评估蒙古牧区社会生态系统对气候变化的脆弱性，评估基于社区的牧场管理对蒙古牧区系统恢复力的影响，加强蒙古科学与政策制定之间的联系，并建立参与蒙古和美国研究人员和学生的能力，以分析复杂的自然-人类耦合系统的动态。 研究人员将在该项目中使用一系列方法，包括遥感、气候和水文建模，以评估气候和土地利用随时间的变化以及这些变化对牧场水文和生产力的影响。 他们将使用观察方法，如访谈，家庭调查，植物和牲畜实地采样，以比较社区管理区和非社区管理区的生态，社会和恢复力指标，他们将进行有针对性的放牧清除实验，以提高对天气和放牧在确定不同生态区牧场条件方面的相对重要性的理解。 将使用统计、统计和过程建模以及地理空间三维可视化技术对数据进行分析和整合。 该项目将教育和培训美国和蒙古的研究生和中学教师，并将通过参与式系统建模和情景规划研讨会直接让利益相关者和政策制定者参与进来。通过使用大样本、病例对照设计来考察牧场社区机构的绩效和成果，该设计考虑了生态和区域背景的变化，这一项目将大大有助于对蒙古和其他地方基于社区的牧场管理机构的基本了解。 该项目将在方法上作出贡献，评估社区管理在多个尺度上的影响，并在每个尺度上综合物理、生态和社会取样和数据分析，从而促进对复杂系统中跨尺度动态的理解。 该项目的结果将对蒙古和其他地方的环境政策产生重大影响，并将使牧民和决策者等利益攸关方受益，因为他们参与了参与式建模和生态系统规划研讨会。 该项目将对地球仪各地的干旱和半干旱牧场具有相关性，在这些牧场上，牧民和决策者正在设法科普不断变化的气候，并建立管理机构，以增强旱地系统的复原力和促进其可持续性。 该项目由NSF耦合自然和人类系统动力学（CNH）计划和NSF国际科学与工程办公室支持。