SEES Fellows: Landowner decision-making and landscape-level reforestation

SEES 研究员：土地所有者决策和景观层面的重新造林

• 批准号: 1744643
• 负责人: Trevor Caughlin
• 金额: $ 10.36万
• 依托单位: Boise State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-05-20 至 2021-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1744643&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SEES; Fellows; Landowner; decision; making

The project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. Sustainability science is an emerging field that addresses the challenges of meeting human needs without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A strong scientific workforce requires individuals educated and trained in interdisciplinary research and thinking, especially in the area of sustainability science. With the SEES Fellowship support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish himself in an independent research career related to sustainability. This project addresses the more sustainable management of degraded agricultural areas in Panama, with a particular focus on how the natural regrowth in abandoned areas may be more effectively managed to enhance the conservation of biodiversity. The work will be done in Panama in collaboration with a local non-governmental organization. Results will include a freely available computer model for exploring the coupled human and natural aspects of reforestation in the tropics, as well as workshops involving both local people using the land for agriculture, researchers, and government officials. Native secondary forest regrowth in degraded tropical landscapes is critical for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and human livelihood. Reforestation over a large spatial extent will be necessary to counteract tropical deforestation rates of millions of hectares per year. Although landscape-scale reforestation requires an understanding of both social processes enabling land use change and ecological processes enabling forest succession, the social and ecological drivers have largely been studied in separate disciplinary frameworks and at different spatial scales. This project will bridge this knowledge gap using a novel modeling approach to link landowner decision-making with forest dynamics. The model will be applied to the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, a landscape similar to many other Latin American sites. Three questions are posed: (1) How does landowner decision-making determine the spatial configuration of patches available for reforestation? (2) How does the spatial configuration of reforesting patches determine the rate of reforestation? (3) Where in the landscape will spontaneous reforestation occur, and where are socioeconomic or ecological interventions necessary to promote an increase in native forest cover? Ultimately, the research will apply complexity theory to produce a systemic conservation plan with detailed, site-specific recommendations for increasing reforestation. This will provide key insight into restoring Mesoamerican tropical dry forest, an endangered ecosystem, and develop a modeling framework for uniting social and ecological data that could be applied to many other regions. This project is co-funded by the NSF International Science and Engineering program (ISE).

该项目由美国国家科学基金会（NSF）科学、工程和教育可持续发展研究员（SEES研究员）计划支持，其目标是帮助实现必要的发现，为导致环境、能源和社会可持续发展的行动提供信息，同时创造必要的劳动力来应对这些挑战。可持续发展科学是一个新兴的领域，它解决了在不损害环境的情况下满足人类需求的挑战，同时又不牺牲后代满足其需求的能力。一支强大的科学队伍需要在跨学科研究和思维方面受过教育和训练的个人，特别是在可持续性科学领域。在SEES奖学金的支持下，该项目将使一位有前途的早期职业研究员能够在与可持续发展相关的独立研究生涯中建立自己的职业生涯。该项目涉及对巴拿马退化农业区进行更可持续的管理，特别侧重于如何更有效地管理废弃地区的自然再生，以加强对生物多样性的保护。这项工作将在巴拿马与当地一个非政府组织合作进行。结果将包括一个免费提供的计算机模型，用于探索热带地区重新造林的人类和自然耦合方面，以及由土地用于农业的当地居民、研究人员和政府官员参加的讲习班。退化热带景观中原生次生林的再生对生物多样性保护、碳封存和人类生计至关重要。为了抵消每年数百万公顷的热带森林砍伐率，在大的空间范围内重新造林是必要的。虽然景观尺度的再造林需要了解导致土地利用变化的社会过程和导致森林演替的生态过程，但社会和生态驱动因素在很大程度上是在不同的学科框架和不同的空间尺度上进行研究的。该项目将利用一种新颖的建模方法，将土地所有者的决策与森林动态联系起来，从而弥合这一知识差距。该模型将应用于巴拿马的Azuero半岛，这是一个与许多其他拉丁美洲景点相似的景观。研究提出了三个问题：(1)土地所有者的决策如何决定可用于再造林的斑块的空间配置？(2)再造林斑块的空间格局如何决定再造林的速度？(3)在景观的哪些地方会发生自发的再造林，哪些地方需要社会经济或生态干预来促进原生森林覆盖的增加？最终，这项研究将应用复杂性理论来制定一个系统的保护计划，其中包括详细的、针对具体地点的增加再造林的建议。这将为恢复中美洲热带干旱森林这一濒危生态系统提供关键见解，并开发一个可应用于许多其他地区的统一社会和生态数据的建模框架。该项目由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程项目（ISE）共同资助。