Collaborative Research: Climate, human and ecosystem interactions in the face of a rapidly changing North Asian biome

在全球许多地区，环境变化和社会经济状况日益紧密地联系在一起，产生了人们仍然很少了解和预测不足的区域脆弱性。北亚，特别是西伯利亚南部和蒙古北部的亚北极地区，经历了其他地区迄今前所未有的升温速度，为早期研究全球变暖对人类和环境的影响提供了机会。一个蒙古-美国合作研究小组将调查牧区游牧食物生产、环境稳定性和气候波动之间的三种关系，以更好地理解可持续管理这种复杂关系的人类组织原则。牧民游牧是一种土著北极和亚北极自给自足的经济，维持着从蒙古到北冰洋的众多人口，并以其灵活性、对牧场的管理以及在小规模社会和民族国家内取得的生产性成功而闻名。通过将早期历史牧业及其社会经济组织与一千多年来的环境条件和气候变化进行比较，该项目提供了一个深入的视角，以了解在不断变化的气候制度下当今使用的可持续和不可持续的做法。这项研究的目的是代表广泛的社区和生活方式，跨越国界，促进成功适应环境变化。研究人员认为，这项研究将有助于维持整个亚洲最北端的本土粮食生产系统，重点是维护当地环境。研究结果在世界其他游牧地区，尤其是非洲大陆的环境和土地利用政策制定方面具有更广泛的适用性。该项目加强了跨学科合作，并为美国和蒙古的初级学者、本科生和研究生提供气候生物社会科学和跨学科研究整合方面的实践培训。该项目框架依赖于高分辨率历史和环境数据的组合，这些数据将作为时间序列进行分析，并在两个时间尺度上进行比较：25年的短序列(1990年至今)和1300年的长序列(公元700年至今)。过去四分之一个世纪的数据将包括：1)树木年轮记录揭示的森林生产力趋势；2)草原生产力趋势；3)人类利用这些生态系统与近期社会经济变化有关的民族历史和民族志证据；4)牲畜种群和死亡率数据。通过一千多年来对气候和社会文化的观察，当代模式将与之联系在一起。这些资料将根据树木年轮分析、湖心和孢粉研究以及考古研究汇编而成，所有这些研究都提供了替代的环境指标，并记录了游牧牧民与北部森林生态系统之间的关系。通过比较森林草原和人类社区随时间的变化轨迹，这项研究开发了新的方法和洞察生态系统、气候、人类文化和促进长期可持续发展的政策之间的联系。数据和成果将通过出版物和公众宣传广泛传播，但主要将与依赖亚洲北极和亚北极地区畜牧业的土著社区分享和发展。

In many parts of the globe environmental change and socio-economic conditions are increasingly tied together producing regional vulnerabilities that are still poorly understood and under-anticipated. Northern Asia, and particularly the subarctic zone of southern Siberia and northern Mongolia, has experienced rates of warming that are so far unprecedented elsewhere and provide an opportunity for the early study of human and environmental impacts due to global warming. A Mongolian-American collaborative research team will investigate the three way relationship between pastoral nomadic food production, environmental robustness, and climate fluctuation in order to better understand principles of human organization that serve to sustainably manage this complex relationship. Pastoral nomadism is an indigenous Arctic and subarctic subsistence economy that sustains numerous populations from Mongolia to the Arctic Ocean and is known for its flexibility, stewardship of rangelands, and productive success within small-scale societies as well as nation states. By comparing early historical pastoralism and its socio-economic organization to environmental conditions and climate variation over more than a millennium, this project provides a deep-time perspective on sustainable and unsustainable practices in use today under a changing climate regime. This research aims to promote successful adaptation to environmental change on behalf of a broad spectrum of communities and lifeways and across national borders. The researchers believe that this research will help to sustain systems of indigenous food production throughout northernmost Asia with emphasis placed on maintaining local environments. The results have broader applicability to other pastoral nomadic regions of the world, most notably the African continent in terms of environmental and land use policy making. The project strengthens interdisciplinary collaboration and provides hands-on training for U.S. and Mongolian junior scholars, undergraduates, and graduate students in climatic bio-social science and cross-disciplinary research integration. The project framework relies on a combination of high-resolution historical and environmental data that will be analyzed as time series and compared across two time scales: a short sequence of 25 years (1990 to present) and a long-sequence of 1300 years (700 AD to present). Data from the past quarter-century will comprise 1) trends in forest productivity as revealed by the tree-ring record; 2) trends in steppe productivity; 3) ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence of human use of these ecosystems in relation to recent socio-economic change; and 4) livestock population and mortality data. Contemporary patterns will be contextualized by more than one thousand years of climatic and socio-cultural observations. These will be compiled from tree-ring analysis, lake core and palynological studies, and from archaeological research, all of which provide alternate environmental indicators as well as a record of the relationship between nomadic pastoralists and the northern forest ecosystem. By juxtaposing the trajectory of the forest-steppe and human communities over time, this research develops new approaches and insight to the linkages between ecosystems, climate, human culture, and policy that promote long-term sustainability. Data and results will be widely disseminated through publications and public outreach but principally will be shared with and developed for the indigenous communities that rely on pastoralism across the Asian Arctic and subarctic biomes.