CAREER: Citizens, Conservation, and Climate: Research and Education for Climate Literacy in Managed Landscapes

公共土地提供重要的生态系统服务，如水资源的供应和调节、气候调节以及文化和精神灵感。气候变化影响了这些生态系统服务的可持续性，由于美国西部拥有广泛的公共土地，管理部门有必要对这些影响做出反应。土地管理活动(例如，火、放牧、选择性间伐树木)通过直接影响陆地植被的结构和组成，间接改变水、能量和养分循环，从而影响生态系统服务。地表水分和能量平衡的变化导致了区域水文气候的相应变化。缺乏对这些反馈以及它们如何传播到诸如供水等生态系统服务的量化了解。该项目将增进对土地管理做法如何影响区域水气候的基本了解，同时促进改进水气候-人类系统耦合模型的建立。具体地说，现有的模型将被用来开发一个实验框架，明确模拟：(1)土地管理机构对气候变化感知的自主行为，以及(2)区域气候和水文如何对与这些管理活动相关的景观干扰做出反应。模型之间的信息交流将以景观植被的组织和结构因管理活动而发生变化的形式进行。这一建模框架将被用来理解管理活动和气候变化如何在全球气候变化时联合重新分配水文系统。该项目的重点是量化美国爱达荷州西南部一个大型供水盆地的降水量、积雪储量、土壤湿度和径流等关键变量的变化。该项目还将提高爱达荷州K-12教育中的气候素养。研究小组将开发一项试点计划，培训和装备教育工作者，让他们的学生参与制造、使用和探索微型自动气象站。将该计划与共同核心标准联系起来，参加培训计划的K-12教师将获得专业发展学分，并担任该计划的大使。该项目将调查土地管理决策(如森林疏伐、规定的火灾)将如何在气候变化的情况下改变公共土地的生态和水文健康。特别是，我们将确定与这些和其他管理活动有关的植被变化如何影响区域降水和供水。我们将通过将人类活动和决策与物理过程相结合的模拟工具来实现这一点，以创造未来的情景。这些情景将帮助土地管理者调整他们的做法，以适应不断变化的气候，以更好地保护水资源。该项目还将开发一项计划，帮助K-12教师对学生进行气候教育。该计划将提供培训和材料，使学生能够创建气象站来监测气候，并将这些观测结果带入课堂。总体而言，该项目将影响公共土地的保护，公共土地约占西部各州的50%，并提供至关重要的自然资源，并促进提高气候素养，提高我们适应不断变化的气候的能力。

Public lands provide important ecosystem services such provisioning and regulation of water resources, climate regulation, and cultural and spiritual inspiration. Climate change impacts the sustainability of these ecosystem services and with the extensive public lands across the western U.S., a management response to these impacts is necessary. Land management activities (e.g., fire, grazing, selective tree thinning) influence ecosystem services by directly impacting the structure and composition of terrestrial vegetation and indirectly modifying water, energy, and nutrient cycling. Changes to surface moisture and energy balance induce corresponding changes in the regional hydroclimate. Quantitative understanding of these feedbacks and how they propagate to ecosystem services like the provisioning of water is lacking. This project will improve fundamental understanding of how land management practices influence regional hydroclimate while facilitating improved modeling of coupled hydroclimate-human systems. Specifically, existing models will be used to develop an experimental framework that explicitly simulates: (1) the autonomous behavior of land management agencies in response to perceptions of climate change, and (2) how regional climate and hydrology respond to landscape disturbance associated with these management activities. Information exchange between models will occur in the form of changes to the organization and structure of landscape vegetation as a result of management activities. This modeling framework will be used to understand how management activities and climate change jointly replumb the hydrologic system as the global climate changes. The project focuses on quantifying changes in key variables like precipitation, snow storage, soil moisture, and streamflow in a large water supply basin in southwest Idaho, USA. This project will also improve climate literacy in Idaho k-12 education. The research team will develop a pilot program to train and equip educators to engage their students in the fabrication, use, and exploration of miniaturized automated weather stations. Linking the program to Common Core standards, participating k-12 teachers will be conferred professional development credits by taking part in the training program and engaged as ambassadors for the program. Travel expenses for several teachers of underserved populations will be supported by the project.This project will investigate how land management decisions (e.g., forest thinning, prescribed fire) will modify the ecological and hydrological health of public lands in a changing climate. In particular, we will determine how changes in vegetation associated with these and other management activities impact regional precipitation and water supply. We will accomplish this by linking simulation tools that incorporate human activities and decision-making with physical processes to create scenarios of the future. These scenarios will help land managers adapt their practices to a changing climate to better protect water resources. This project will also develop a program to help k-12 teachers educate students about climate. This program will provide the training and materials to enable students to create meteorological stations to monitor climate and bring those observations into the classroom. Overall, this project will influence conservation of public lands, which comprise approximately 50% of western states and provide critically important natural resources, and promote improved climate literacy, increasing our capacity to adapt to a changing climate.