Workshop on Mathematical Challenges for Sustainability

人口的增长和发展压力的增加给我们星球上的生命带来了各种各样的挑战，特别是目前的人类活动模式是否可持续。人类活动与自然环境密切相关，人类活动与环境过程之间存在双向联系。我们越来越注意到，人类活动如何影响维持生命的系统，包括气候、健康的空气和水、食物供应。地球上的资源有限，我们需要维持我们的生活方式：能源，清洁的水，可耕地。随着环境条件的变化，有可能出现新的疾病，物种可能会进入它们不熟悉的地区，挤占我们习惯的物种，人类的状况可能会受到环境变化的威胁。对不断变化的自然资源、短缺和在某些情况下的盈余的竞争可能影响到诸如国界等基本社会结构和我们经济制度的健康。这些问题是复杂的、多学科的、相互交织的。他们呼吁“可持续发展的科学”。认识到我们所知道的地球上生命面临的挑战，NSF发起了一项关于可持续发展的重大新倡议（SEES），该倡议涉及基金会的所有董事。然而，迄今为止，数学科学只以有限的方式参与其中。然而，在各种各样的领域中，有许多非常复杂、有趣和重要的数学问题，让数学科学界进行研究是很重要的。该项目支持一个研讨会，该研讨会将描述这些数学挑战，并将产生一份报告，该报告将广泛分发给数学科学界、国家科学基金会及其在加拿大的对应机构国家科学研究委员会。可持续性问题涉及许多学科。该项目确定的数学挑战有望导致对各种具有重大社会重要性的主题的研究，例如气候变化，环境健康，有限自然资源的管理，以及这些主题与健康的经济系统和持久的社会结构之间的相互联系。

The growing human population and increasing pressures for development have led to a variety of challenges for life on our planet, in particular whether current patterns of human activity are sustainable. Human activity is closely tied to the natural environment and there is a two-way interconnection between human activity and environmental processes. Increasingly, we are noting how human activities affect the systems that sustain life, including climate, healthy air and water, availability of food. The earth has finite resources that we need to sustain our life style: sources of energy, clean water, arable land. As environmental conditions change, there are possibilities for new diseases, species can move into areas to which they are non-native and crowd out the species to which we are accustomed, and the human condition can be threatened by environmental change. Fundamental societal structures such as national boundaries and the health of our economic systems can be affected by competition for changing natural resources, shortages and in some cases surpluses. These problems are complex, multi-disciplinary, and intertwined. They call for a "science of sustainability."Recognizing the challenges to life on our planet as we know it, NSF has initiated a major new initiative on sustainability (SEES) that involves all directorates in the Foundation. However, to date, the mathematical sciences have been involved only in a limited way. Yet, there are many mathematical problems of great complexity, interest, and importance in a wide variety of areas that it would be important to get the mathematical sciences community to work on. This project supports a workshop that will describe these mathematical challenges and that will lead to a report to be circulated widely to the mathematical sciences community as well as NSF and also its counterpart in Canada, NSERC. The problems of sustainability cross many disciplines. The mathematical challenges the project identifies can be expected to lead to research on a wide variety of topics of great societal importance such as climate change, environmental health, management of limited natural resources, and the interconnections of these topics with healthy economic systems and enduring social structures.