Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Arctic Community Resilience to Boreal Environmental Change: Assessing Risks from Fire and Disease (ACRoBEAR)

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This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions.Working together in this Collaborative Research Action, the partner agencies have provided support to foster global transdisciplinary research teams of natural (including climate), health and social scientists and stakeholders from across the globe to improve understanding of climate, environment and health pathways to protect and promote health. The projects will provide crucial new understanding into the health implications arising from the impacts of climate change and variability on; 1) the quality/quantity of food, 2) chronic exposure to increases/changes in heat and humidity and 3) changes in the distribution and incidence of a range of infectious diseases and emergence of novel pathogens. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries to increase our knowledge of the complex linkages and pathways between the climate, environment and health to help solve complex challenges that face societies. This project seeks to predict and understand health risks from wildfire air pollution and vector-borne disease in the Arctic, and the resilience and adaptability of communities across the region to these risks. This project focuses on a critical challenge as the Arctic has warmed rapidly over recent decades, at around twice the rate of global mean temperature increases, resulting in rapid changes to this environment. The Arctic has been affected by unprecedented fire activity, leading to unhealthy air quality in high latitude towns and cities. Vector-borne disease occurrence in these regions is also changing in response to rapid changes in temperature and moisture. The fire activity is also affecting this disease risk by altering the habitat conditions for vectors and their hosts. The project will focus on integrating satellite and in-situ observations, modelling, health data, and community knowledge and stakeholder dialogue to understand community resilience and response to these changing risks. This information will help communities address environmental, social, and governance challenges in the most rapidly warming region of the planet.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.