SAVI: Climate Change, Human Adaptation and Risks to Sustainable Freshwater Ecosystems in the Western Hemisphere and Beyond

1336839协调这一虚拟机构间科学(SAVI)项目将通过审查气候驱动的淡水生态系统风险及其提供的服务，整合西半球的多种可持续性研究工作。气候变化和对生态系统服务的威胁之间的联系知之甚少，很难评估，因为它取决于区域气候对全球气候变化的反应。生态系统服务的价值因人类需求和文化环境的不同而在当地和区域有所不同。因此，评估(和减轻)这些对紧密耦合的自然-人类系统的威胁需要一个多学科的方法来解决科学、社会经济和文化方面的问题。在这个项目中，来自美国的研究人员将与来自加拿大、阿根廷、哥伦比亚、智利、乌拉圭和未来全球参与国的互补研究人员合作。该SAVI的目标是使所有这些研究人员能够扩大他们的地理和社会经济覆盖范围，以更好地评估气候和人类强迫对淡水生态系统和服务的风险，并制定适应战略。该项目将通过以下方式实现这一目标：(1)开发和实施标准化的环境网络基础设施(数据获取、管理和协作分析技术)，在全球范围内利用淡水生态系统作为气候变化和服务风险的哨兵(特别是在中南美洲以前从未观察到的环境中)；(2)调查流域和生态系统与多种压力源的相互作用，以评估地球物理、社会经济和文化梯度上的生态系统服务风险；(3)加强美国、加拿大和拉丁美洲国家之间的国际合作，为利益攸关方参与制定可转移的战略，以确定在技术和经济上可行，以及在文化上可接受的管理和缓解战略；(4)将我们的研究生培训和随后的博士研究结合起来，培养下一代参与国际事务的跨学科水生生态系统研究人员，他们将应对对社会具有重要意义的科学挑战。人类受益于淡水生态系统提供的资源和过程，包括溪流、河流、湖泊和湿地。这项工作将研究这些好处，即生态系统服务，预计将如何随着气候变化而变化。生态系统服务可分为四大类：供应(如饮用水或水电)、调节(如调节气候、控制疾病)、支持(如分配沉积物和养分)和文化(如娱乐效益)。该项目将联合工程师、地球科学家、生物学家和社会科学家，努力了解气候变化影响不同地区水生生态系统的速度和严重程度。与此同时，调查人员将为人们确定适当的战略，通过在当地或地区调整做法来减少这些变化的影响。生活在不同地方的人们对生态系统服务的评价不同。例如，生活在大城市的人们对饮用水或渔业质量的重视可能与居住在湖上的人不同。该项目的一部分将侧重于确定不同文化和社会经济环境中的成功适应战略，并将这些战略传达给相关的利益攸关方。最后，该项目将继续让本科生和研究生参与其研究和利益相关者外联活动，以便更好地为他们应对未来全球福祉的挑战做好准备。该奖项被指定为跨虚拟机构科学奖，由美国国家科学基金会S国际与综合活动办公室共同资助。

1336839HarmonThis Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) project will integrate multiple sustainability research efforts in the western hemisphere by examining climate-driven risks to freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide. The connection between climate variation and threats to ecosystem services is poorly understood and difficult to assess because it depends on regional climate responses to global climate change. The value of ecosystems services varies locally and regionally with varying human needs and cultural settings. Hence, assessing (and mitigating) these threats to tightly coupled natural-human system requires a multidisciplinary approach addressing scientific, socioeconomic and cultural aspects. In this project, researchers from the U.S. will team with complementary investigators from Canada, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, and future participating nations globally. The goal of this SAVI is to enable all these researchers to expand their geographical and socioeconomic coverage to better assess climate- and human-forced risks to freshwater ecosystems and services, and to develop adaptation strategies. The project will achieve this goal by (1) Developing and implementing a standardized environmental cyberinfrastructure (technology for data acquisition, management, and collaborative analysis) to employ freshwater ecosystems globally as sentinels of climate variability and risk to services (particularly in previously unobserved settings in Central and South America); (2) Investigating watershed and ecosystem interactions with multiple stressors to assess risks to ecosystem services across geophysical, socioeconomic, and cultural gradients; (3) Enhancing international collaboration between the U.S., Canada and Latin American nations in developing transferrable strategies for stakeholder engagement to determine management and mitigation strategies which are both technically and economically feasible, as well as culturally acceptable; and (4) Integrating our graduate student training and subsequent doctoral research to train the next generation of internationally engaged, inter-disciplinary aquatic ecosystems researchers who will attack scientific challenges of importance to society.Humans benefit from resources and processes supplied by freshwater ecosystems, including streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands. This work will study how these benefits, which are referred to as ecosystem services, are expected to change with changing climate. Ecosystem services can be grouped into four broad categories: provisioning (drinking water or hydropower for example), regulating (such as modulating climate, controlling disease), supporting (such as distributing sediments and nutrients), and cultural (such as recreational benefits). The project will unite engineers, earth scientists, biologists and social scientists in an effort aimed at understanding how quickly and how severely climate changes will affect aquatic ecosystems in different places. At the same time, the investigators will identify suitable strategies for people to reduce the impact of these changes by adapting practices locally or regionally. People living in different places value ecosystems services differently. For example, people living in a large city may value drinking water or the quality of a fishery differently than people living on a lake. Part of this project will focus on identifying successful adaptation strategies within different cultures and socioeconomic settings and communicating these strategies to relevant stakeholders. Lastly, the project will continuously involve undergraduate and graduate students in its research and stakeholder outreach activities in order to better prepare them to address the challenges ahead for our global well-being.This award is designated as a Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) award and is being co-funded by NSF?s Office of International and Integrative Activities.