CNH: Socio-Ecosystem Dynamics of Human-Natural Networks on Model Islands

该项目将提高我们对自然-人类耦合系统的理解，并推进自然科学和社会科学的前沿，通过重点关注由人类占领一千年前后四个经过充分研究的岛屿组成的模型系统，将它们整合起来。项目团队将开发和测试概念和定量理论，强调人类与支持人类的复杂生态系统之间的反馈。该项目采用考古和古生态学方法，以增加对四个研究社会生态系统的初始条件和随后的发展轨迹之间关系的理解。这种理解将用于开发和约束计算模型，这些模型将用于测试有关长期人类生态反馈的理论。该项目特别寻求将人类作为资源的自给消费者和作为市场驱动的资源开发者的双重作用结合起来。理解和综合模型将用于探索人们提取生物质的可持续性（例如，在生态系统服务和环境变化的背景下，从复杂的生态系统中获取鱼类、纤维、燃料和木材。这项工作包括三个活动：1）建立一个全面的网络理论的动态耦合的自然-人类系统，包括其鲁棒性和弹性的外部和内部的变化; 2）应用该理论，并测试它对，引进，持久性，和动态的波利尼西亚人在四个太平洋岛屿;和3）探索该理论的发展和应用如何支持我们进一步理解多样性和复杂性及其与生态系统管理的相互作用。该项目将帮助我们了解人类如何以及为什么成功或失败地在其环境中可持续地生活。这项研究考察了四个法属波利尼西亚岛屿，人类大约在一千年前到达这些岛屿，并在一些岛屿上可持续地生活，但在其他岛屿上却没有。将利用历史和当前数据，帮助更清楚地了解这些岛屿首次被占领以来所发生的社会和生态变化。该项目团队将建立和测试人类与野生和管理的生态系统互动的复杂计算机模型。这些数据和模型将有助于更充分地描述和解释基本特性，例如人类所需的资源以及生态系统在数百年内为人类提供食物和住所的能力。它们还将突出生态系统服务与人类利用和开发岛屿资源之间的相互作用。这些知识对于了解人类在这些岛屿以外的生态系统和环境方面的作用至关重要。该项目将提供关于人类如何能够更可持续和更有益地与各种陆地和水生生态系统互动的基本知识。这项工作还将展示如何将生态学、水文学、海洋学、考古学、人口学和经济学等环境和社会科学相结合，以推动跨学科科学的前沿。这些进展对于解决社会科学和自然科学交叉领域的关键问题至关重要，包括资源过度消耗，气候破坏和文明崩溃。

This project will improve our understanding of coupled natural-human systems and advance the frontiers of natural and social sciences, integrating them through a focus on model systems comprising four well-studied islands before and after a millennium of human occupation. The project team will develop and test conceptual and quantitative theory that emphasizes feedbacks between humans and the complex ecological systems that support them. The project applies archaeological and paleo-ecological methods to increase understanding of the relationships between initial conditions and subsequent developmental trajectories in the four study socio-ecosystems. This understanding will be used to develop and constrain computational models which will be used to test theories regarding long-term human-ecology feedbacks. The project seeks in particular to integrate the dual roles of humans as subsistence consumers of resources and as market-driven exploiters of resources. The understanding and integrated models will be used to explore the sustainability of people's extraction of biomass (e.g., fish, fiber, fuel, and timber) from complex ecosystems in the context of ecosystem services and environmental change. This work includes three activities: 1) Build a comprehensive network theory of dynamic coupled natural-human systems including their robustness and resilience to external and internal change; 2) apply the theory to, and test it against, the introduction, persistence, and dynamics of Polynesians on four Pacific Islands; and 3) explore how the development and application of the theory might support further advances in our understanding of diversity and complexity and their interactions with ecosystem management.This project will help us to understand how and why humans succeed or fail to live sustainably within their environment. The research examines four French Polynesian islands where humans arrived about one thousand years ago and lived sustainably on some islands but not on others. Historical and current data will be used to help develop a clearer picture of the social and ecological changes that have taken place since the islands were first occupied. The project team will build and test sophisticated computer models of humans interacting with wild and managed ecosystems. The data and models will help more fully describe and explain fundamental properties such as the resources required by human populations and the ability of ecosystems to provide food and shelter for humans over hundreds of years. They will also highlight interactions between ecosystem services and the human use and exploitation of the islands' resources. Such knowledge is critical to understanding the role of humans with respect to ecosystems and environments well beyond these islands. The project will provide fundamental knowledge about how humans can interact more sustainably and beneficially with a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. This work will also demonstrate how environmental and social sciences such as ecology, hydrology, oceanography, archaeology, demography and economics can be integrated to push forward the frontiers of interdisciplinary science. Such advances are vital for addressing critical problems at the intersection of social and natural sciences including resource overconsumption, climate disruption and the collapse of civilizations.