CNH: The Effects of China's Grain-for-Green Program on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural-Human System in Rural China

反常的经济效应会在自然系统和人类系统之间产生强烈的负反馈。例如，自然资源利用的短期、小规模净经济效益损害了相关资源的未来供应，会降低长期、大规模的经济效益。许多政府项目已经有效地验证了这样一种假设，即这种负面反馈可以通过经济上的反激励措施消除，但这些项目中很少（如果有的话）适合并经受严格的科学分析，以确定测试的真实结果并帮助推广结果。本项目将分析可能是最广泛使用的反激励类型中最大的方案，即中国的坡地改造方案，这是一种支付环境服务的方案。根据该计划，政府向农民支付费用，将坡耕地或其他生态敏感地区的耕地变为森林或草地。研究人员将对三个省的农民和地方政府机构进行调查，以确定该计划的实施情况和对农民决策的影响，利用卫星图像检测土地覆盖的变化，并根据实地测量建立碳储量和水可用性模型。该项目的成果将对美国的政策制定者和土地利用管理者具有重要价值，在美国，类似的项目已经在生态恢复和保护的背景下进行了尝试和设想。这项研究还将有助于为减少森林砍伐和森林退化造成的碳排放的全球讨论提供信息。该项目将加强中美两国在社会科学和自然科学领域的科学合作，培养大量本科生和研究生。

Perverse economic effects can create strong negative feedbacks between natural and human systems. For example, short-term, fine-scale, net economic benefits from uses of natural resources that compromise the future supply of related resources can reduce long-term, large-scale economic benefits. Numerous governmental programs have effectively tested the hypothesis that such negative feedbacks can be eliminated with economic counter-incentives, but few if any of these programs have been suitable for and subjected to the rigorous scientific analysis needed to determine the true results of the test and help generalize results. This project will analyze what is probably the largest program within the most widely used type of counter-incentive, the Sloping Lands Conversion Program of China, a program of payment for environmental services. Under this program, the government pays farmers to convert cropland on sloping or otherwise ecologically sensitive areas to forest or grassland. Researchers will survey farmers and local governmental agencies in three provinces to determine how the program was implemented and affected the decisions of farmers, detect changes in land cover using satellite imagery, and model carbon storage and water availability based on field measurements. Results of this project will be of great value to policy makers and land use managers in the U.S., where similar programs have been tried and are envisioned in the context of ecological restoration and protection. The research also will help inform the global discourse on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This project will strengthen scientific collaboration in both social and natural science between the U.S. and China, and train numerous undergraduate and graduate students.