RAPID: Studying the Effects of Disturbance in a Complex Socioecological System

这项研究提出了一个重要的科学和人道主义问题：当一个平稳运作和可持续的社会生态系统受到来自外部政治危机的难民的干扰时，会发生什么？这个问题既及时又具有科学意义。 尼日利亚东北部的危机提供了一个宝贵的机会，可以在一个小的，因此可以管理的研究规模进行调查。在过去两年中，数千名牧民逃离了博科圣地在尼日利亚造成的不安全局势，并带着牲畜迁往喀麦隆远北地区的洛贡洪泛区。在早期的研究中，研究人员马克莫里茨博士（俄亥俄州州立大学）和他的团队发现，已经使用洛贡地区的移动的牧民正在可持续地管理这些放牧资源，没有冲突。它们建立了一个分散和灵活的系统，向所有人开放，不分种族、国籍、资历或社会经济地位。这种基线研究加上难民新来者提供的干扰，使研究人员有机会看到以前记录的系统对极端干扰的弹性。当新来者的涌入使系统必须支持的人口翻了一番时，开放获取的精神还能继续存在吗？累积起来，人类，动物和自然元素的洛贡平原组成了一个复杂的适应系统中，即使没有中央权威，个人的决策结果在一个理想的自由分配放牧压力的可用放牧资源。现在，研究人员将研究牧民的理想自由分布是否仍然存在;难民牧民的涌入是否影响了开放获取的风气和实践;以及涌入带来了哪些其他变化。他们将使用全球定位系统/地理信息系统技术绘制牧民营地的位置;使用归一化差异植被指数（一种经常更新的遥感植被指数），每隔一段时间记录植被资源的当前分布情况;记录季节性放牧轨道以寻找变化;并就其战略采访尼日利亚和尼日利亚牧民。这个项目的紧迫性，因此需要一个快速奖，是在这个特定的时刻，畜牧系统是在最大的压力，这使得研究人员在真实的时间研究社会生态系统，因为它适应或崩溃。

This research asks a significant scientific and humanitarian question: what happens when a smoothly functioning and sustainable socio-ecological system is disturbed by refugees from an external political crisis? The question is timely as well as scientifically important. A valuable opportunity to investigate it on a small and thus manageable research scale is provided by the crisis in Northeast Nigeria. In the last two years, thousands of pastoralists have fled the insecurity caused by Boko Haram in Nigeria and moved with their livestock to the Logone Floodplain in the Far North Region of Cameroon. In earlier research, the researchers, Dr. Mark Moritz (Ohio State University) and his team, found that the mobile pastoralists who were already using the Logone region were sustainably managing these grazing resources without conflict. They had developed a decentralized and flexible system in which access was open to all, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, seniority, or socioeconomic status. This baseline research plus the disturbance provided by the refugee newcomers gives the researchers a rare opportunity to see how resilient a previously documented system is to an extreme perturbation. Will the ethos of open access survive when the influx of newcomers doubles the population the system must support?Cumulatively, the human, animal, and natural elements of the Logone plain comprise a complex adaptive system in which, even though there is no central authority, individual decision-making results in an ideal free distribution of grazing pressure over the available grazing resources. Now the researchers will look to see if there is still an ideal free distribution of pastoralists; if the influx of refugee pastoralists has affected the ethos and practice of open access; and what other changes the influx has brought about. They will use GPS/GIS technology to map the locations of pastoralist camps; document at intervals the current distribution of vegetative resources by using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, a remotely sensed vegetative index that is refreshed frequently; document transhumance orbits to look for changes; and interview both Nigerian and Cameroonian pastoralists about their strategies. The urgency of this project, and hence the need for a RAPID award, is that at this particular moment the pastoral system is under the greatest stress, which allows the researchers to study in real time a socio-ecological system as it adapts or collapses.