NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2014

NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金将研究和培训结合起来，为年轻科学家在生物学与其他科学学科交叉的新兴领域（在这种情况下是数学和经济学）的职业生涯做好准备。这些研究员有望成为美国未来科学队伍的领导者。扎克·拉塔伊扎克的奖学金支持研究和培训，以解决“经济联系会破坏环境稳定吗？”该奖学金的主办机构是弗吉尼亚大学和斯德哥尔摩大学，赞助科学家是dr。分别是保罗·德奥多里科和卡尔·福克。培训目标包括发展现代社会生态系统的理论建模技能，包括非线性动力学和网络理论。预计研究结果将对公共政策有用，并正在通过与多个利益攸关方团体的讲习班和政策建议进行传播。对K-12和本科群体的教育推广旨在培养对人类和生态系统如何相互影响的更深层次的思考。该奖学金由国际科学与工程办公室、地球科学理事会和生物科学理事会共同资助。本研究探讨了生态和社会生态系统在多大程度上能够发生突发性和难以逆转的转变，即“临界点”。该研究将生态系统描述为人类经济在长距离上相互联系的一系列生态组成部分，这比许多只考虑生态系统之间自然发生的联系的模型有所进步。它探讨了这些经济联系是否加剧了现有的临界点，并创造了在没有人类的情况下不存在的大规模生态临界点。利用这些模型，该研究试图确定适应性策略，以避免引爆点，包括潜在生物多样性的改变。对不同的市场行为模式和资源共享模式的分析应提供应对自然资源随机波动的策略。此外，通过明确地将生态系统结构的显著组成部分和关键生物产品的价格指数整合到模型中，应该有可能检测到在社会生态网络的临界点附近经常出现的动态行为。意识到这些行为可以帮助避免在农田、牧场和渔场等经济上重要的生态系统中出现大规模的生态倾斜。

NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology combine research and training to prepare young scientists for careers in emerging areas where biology intersects with other scientific disciplines, in this case with mathematics and economics. The Fellows are expected to be leaders of the nation's scientific workforce of the future. This fellowship to Zak Ratajczak supports research and training that address the question, "Does economic connectedness undermine environmental stability?" The host institutions for this fellowship are the University of Virginia and Stockholm University and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Paolo D'Odorico and Carl Folke, respectively. Training goals for the fellowship include developing skills in theoretical modeling of modern social-ecological systems, including nonlinear dynamics and network theory. The research results are expected to be useful to public policy and are being disseminated through workshops with multiple stakeholder groups and policy recommendations. Educational outreach to K-12 and undergraduate groups seeks to foster deeper thinking of how humans and ecosystems affect each other. This fellowship is jointly funded by the Office of International Science and Engineering, the Directorate for Geosciences, and the Directorate for Biological Sciences.This research addresses the extent to which ecological and social-ecological systems are capable of abrupt and difficult-to-reverse transitions, referred to as 'tipping points.' The research represents ecosystems as a series of ecological components interconnected over long distances by human economies an advance over many models that consider only naturally occurring connections between ecosystems. It addresses whether these economic connections accentuate existing tipping points and create large-scale ecological tipping points that do not exist in the absence of humans. Using these models, the research seeks to identify adaptive strategies to avoid tipping points, including alterations of underlying biological diversity. Analyses of different modes of market behavior and resource sharing should provide strategies for navigating stochastic fluctuations in natural resources. Furthermore, by explicitly integrating conspicuous components of ecosystem structure and the price indexes of key biological goods into the models, it should be possible to detect dynamic behaviors that often emerge near tipping points in social-ecological networks. Being aware of such behaviors could help avoid large ecological tipping in economically important ecosystems such as croplands, rangelands, and fisheries.