Endangered species as food; interdisciplinary approaches to stemming biodiversity loss and food insecurity

濒临灭绝的物种作为食物；

• 批准号: 1513638
• 负责人: Cortni Borgerson
• 金额: $ 19.4万
• 依托单位: Wildlife Conservation Society
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2015-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1513638&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Endangered; species; food; interdisciplinary; approaches

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship supports a rising scientist in the interdisciplinary area of food security and biodiversity. Although biodiversity and poverty are intimately related, surprisingly few scientists have quantitatively investigated how ecosystem health and human health affect each other. An integrated approach to studying humans and their environment can strengthen both conservation and public health policy to align goals and create potential scenarios of co-benefits from interventions. This postdoctoral fellowship will provide funds to expand the disciplinary breadth of a trained anthropologist to explore interdisciplinary approaches to stem biodiversity loss and stabilize food security in a UNESCO World Heritage site. In addition to training a female scientist from the United States, this project creates educational opportunities for a doctoral student from Madagascar and several local Malagasy research assistants. This project has the potential to directly improve child health and the future of endangered species in one of the most threatened and food insecure habitats on earth. It advances the progress of science by informing the decision making of conservation and public health policy-makers by providing much needed information on the dynamic interactions between ecosystems and human health, and the human incentives that drive the illegal hunting of endangered species. Further, it translates these interdisciplinary scientific findings into applied integrated conservation and public health action on the Masoala to advance the health and welfare of both people and forests. During this project, the research team is designing, applying, and testing the effects of an interdisciplinary conservation and human health action plan in on the Masoala Peninsula of Madagascar, a UNESCO world heritage site. The three-phase multi-disciplinary project aims specifically to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods from anthropology, political economy, conservation biology, ecology, and public health to complete a rigorous interdisciplinary study of human incentives, human health, hunting behavior (including illegal harvest), ecosystem characteristics, and wildlife population dynamics (including five endangered species). Over 24 months at 14 sites, this research team is quantifying the dynamic interactions between the health of forests, people, and endangered species by: interviewing members of over 400 households about their health, resource use, and livelihoods; measuring the health of over 2,000 people through anthropometry and hemoglobin sampling; monitoring the daily behavior of five focal hunters; monitoring forest ecology at 150 habitat plots; and surveying ten lemur species in 140 regional transects and across a trans-peninsula transect of over 110 aerial kilometers. Using these data the team is building a system dynamics model of human-forest-lemur interactions to design and simulate the effects of an integrated human-health and conservation action plan. This action plan is being implemented in 7 test communities to attempt to solve issues of increasing human-wildlife conflict and to determine whether there are possibilities for co-beneficial objectives of conservation and public health intervention.

社会、行为和经济科学理事会提供博士后研究金，为最近的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并在本科和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后研究金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家跨越传统学科领域指导他们的研究工作，并利用独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外。这个博士后奖学金支持在粮食安全和生物多样性的跨学科领域的新兴科学家。虽然生物多样性和贫困密切相关，但令人惊讶的是，很少有科学家定量研究生态系统健康和人类健康如何相互影响。研究人类及其环境的综合方法可以加强保护和公共卫生政策，以调整目标，并创造干预措施的共同利益的潜在情景。该博士后研究金将提供资金，以扩大训练有素的人类学家的学科广度，探索跨学科的方法，以阻止生物多样性丧失和稳定教科文组织世界遗产地的粮食安全。除了培训一名来自美国的女科学家外，该项目还为一名来自马达加斯加的博士生和几名马达加斯加当地的研究助理创造了教育机会。该项目有可能直接改善儿童健康和地球上最受威胁和粮食不安全的栖息地之一的濒危物种的未来。它通过为保护和公共卫生政策制定者的决策提供信息来推动科学的进步，提供有关生态系统和人类健康之间动态相互作用的急需信息，以及推动非法狩猎濒危物种的人类动机。此外，它将这些跨学科的科学发现转化为对Masoala的应用综合保护和公共卫生行动，以促进人民和森林的健康和福利。在这个项目中，研究小组正在马达加斯加的马苏阿拉半岛（联合国教科文组织世界遗产）设计、应用和测试跨学科保护和人类健康行动计划的效果。该三阶段多学科项目旨在整合人类学，政治经济学，保护生物学，生态学和公共卫生的定量和定性方法，以完成对人类激励，人类健康，狩猎行为（包括非法收获），生态系统特征和野生动物种群动态（包括五种濒危物种）的严格跨学科研究。在14个地点的24个月里，该研究小组正在量化森林、人类和濒危物种健康之间的动态相互作用，方法是：采访400多个家庭的成员，了解他们的健康、资源使用和生计;通过人体测量和血红蛋白采样测量2,000多人的健康;监测5个重点猎人的日常行为;在150个栖息地监测森林生态;在140个区域样带和110多公里的跨半岛样带调查10种狐猴。利用这些数据，该团队正在建立一个人类-森林-狐猴相互作用的系统动力学模型，以设计和模拟综合人类健康和保护行动计划的影响。该行动计划正在7个测试社区实施，以试图解决人类与野生动物冲突日益加剧的问题，并确定是否有可能实现保护和公共卫生干预的互利目标。