CNH: Diversification, Portfolio Effects, and the Sustainability of Fishing Communities

越来越明显的是，生物复杂性稳定了许多关键的生态系统过程，并增加了资源流向人类的可靠性。虽然在生态学文献中进行了广泛的讨论，但生物复杂性在多大程度上转化为对社区及其经济的有形社会和经济利益仍然基本上未被探索。我们的研究将探讨渔业生态系统的生物复杂性如何转化为利用这些生态系统的人类社区的社会和经济属性。由于人类活动经常反馈影响生态系统的生物复杂性，我们将进一步探讨人类对生态系统固有变异性的影响如何影响人类社区的社会经济。通过将我们对生物复杂性如何影响人类以及人类行为如何影响自然系统生物复杂性的理解结合起来，我们将能够为有效的生物复杂性政策提供信息。虽然该研究项目的方法、设计和结果可以推广到一系列人类和自然耦合系统中，但我们将重点放在阿拉斯加西部的鲑鱼生产生态系统上，在那里我们对生态系统的自然生物复杂性有广泛的了解，在那里，区域社会经济活动几乎完全由渔业支持，在那里，生态系统的自然和人类组成部分之间存在紧密的反馈。这些特点使这些特殊的系统非常容易进行综合生物经济评估和建模。我们试图了解鲑鱼生态系统的生态动态与阿拉斯加西部依赖鲑鱼为生的人们的社会和经济利益之间的相互作用。我们特别感兴趣的是了解鲑鱼年回报的可靠性（由鲑鱼种群及其流域的生物复杂性决定）如何影响渔业的长期经济绩效和当地居民参与鲑鱼渔业的能力。我们还将探讨当多个生态系统目标被纳入政策时，管理策略应该如何改变。特别是，目前的管理目标仅仅集中在使商业渔业的生物产量最大化，而没有考虑到淡水生态系统中鲑鱼的生态和相关的经济利益（例如，通过钓鱼运动）。此外，我们将评估渔民及其社区从推广其开发多种物种和多种生态系统的努力中获益的程度，作为当前管理系统倾向于鼓励的专业化的替代方案。这项工作将为渔业和其他自然-人类耦合生态系统的社会经济动态和生态动态之间复杂的相互作用提供关键见解。

It has become increasingly apparent that biological complexity stabilizes many key ecosystem processes and increases the reliability of resource flows to humans. While discussed extensively in the ecological literature, the extent to which biocomplexity translates into tangible social and economic benefits to communities and their economies remains essentially unexplored. Our research will investigate how the biocomplexity of fisheries ecosystems translates into social and economic attributes of the human communities that exploit these ecosystems. Because human activities often feed back to affect the biocomplexity of ecosystems, we will further explore how human effects on the inherent variability of ecosystems affect the socio-economics of human communities. By coupling our understanding of how biocomplexity affects humans, and how human actions affect natural system biocomplexity, we will be in a position to inform efficient biocomplexity policy. While the methods, design, and results of this research program will be genera1izable across a range of coupled human and natural systems, we focus on the salmon-producing ecosystems of Western Alaska where we have extensive knowledge of the natural biocomplexity of the ecosystems, where the regional socio economic activities are supported almost exclusively by fisheries, and where tight feedbacks exist between natural and human components of the ecosystems. These features make these particular systems highly tractable to integrated bioeconomic assessment and modeling.We seek to understand the interactions between the ecological dynamics of salmon ecosystems and the social and economic benefits to people who rely on salmon for their livelihoods in Western Alaska. In particular we are interested in understanding how the reliability of annual salmon returns, as determined by the biocomplexity of salmon stocks and their watersheds, affects the long-term economic performance of fisheries and the ability of local residents to participate salmon fisheries. We will also explore how management strategies should change as multiple ecosystem objectives are included into policy. In particular, current management objectives are focused narrowly on maximizing biological yield to commercial fisheries without consideration for the ecological and associated economic benefits of salmon in freshwater ecosystems (e.g., via sport fishing). Further, we will assess the degree to which fishermen and their communities benefit from the opportunity to generalize their efforts to exploit multiple species and multiple ecosystems as an alternative to the specialization that current management systems tend to encourage. This work will provide key insights into the complex interactions between social-economic dynamics and the ecological dynamics of fisheries and other coupled natural-human ecosystems.