NRT: Building resilient landscapes for food, energy, water, and ecosystems in America's megalopolis

康涅狄格大学和卡里生态系统研究所的国家科学基金会研究培训（NRT）奖将支持研究生教育的新模式的发展，重点是预测，管理和沟通城市化地区的食品，能源，水和生态系统的风险。气候变化、栖息地退化、过度开发和物种入侵带来的威胁日益加剧，威胁着食物、能源、水和其他生态系统服务的获取，特别是在城市。防止关键服务的丢失需要准确预测这些风险。为了满足这一需求，我们将培养研究生团队预测替代未来和设计弹性景观。该培训计划将为STEM教育创建一个新颖的跨领域框架，结合协作和基于问题的学习和研究，同时应用旨在招募和保留更多样化学生群体的技术。学员将在沉浸式，基于团队的教育模式中开发新技能，该模式还将新知识应用于现实生活中的应用。风险评估、管理和沟通技能的提高将创造一支高技能的劳动力队伍，能够应对21世纪对人类生命支持系统的威胁。该培训计划预计将为64名博士生提供培训。学生，包括32名来自生命科学，工程，地理，地球科学，自然资源，统计，经济学和计算机科学的资助学员。最终，该补助金将促进学生在一系列职业中担任风险分析师的培训，不仅在学术界，而且在工业，非营利组织和政府中。在快速城市化的世界中，社会需要能够抵御食物、能源、水和其他生态系统服务风险的景观。社会所面临的挑战是设计景观，提供多种人类利益，维护生态系统功能，并证明对未来风险的弹性。该项目将解决悬而未决的争论，例如是密集开发土地，保留更多土地（节约土地），还是适度开发土地，但在更大的地区（土地共享）。为了解决这些争论，并创造弹性城市到野生景观，学生将学习如何应用景观风险评估，以估计威胁，效益和不确定性，通过探索景观联系和开发方案，包括社会经济影响之间的权衡少数。该培训还将开发一个新的跨领域框架，通过协同结合协作，基于问题和基于服务的学习来评估FEWES的风险，从而教授STEM教育。这些实践将结合起来，开发一种独特的研究生教育方法，称为Team-TERRA，或基于团队的，跨学科的，风险估计和现实世界分析。学生将来自不同的背景和学科，并将学习超越传统的学科界限。学员将通过学习如何与利益相关者合作获得环境风险评估证书，发展预测风险和不确定性的定量分析技能，探索管理此类风险的选择，并向客户，利益相关者和公众传达风险和不确定性。总体而言，学员将通过与现实世界的问题，同时为政府，非政府组织和企业提供重要的服务学习可转移的技能。NSF研究培训（NRT）计划旨在鼓励开发和实施大胆的，新的潜在变革模式，用于STEM研究生教育培训。该计划致力于通过创新的、基于证据的、与不断变化的劳动力和研究需求相一致的综合培训模式，在高优先级的跨学科或融合研究领域对STEM研究生进行有效培训。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to the University of Connecticut and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies will support the development of a new model of graduate education focused on predicting, managing, and communicating risks to food, energy, water, and ecosystems in urbanizing regions. Accelerating threats from climate change, habitat degradation, overexploitation, and species invasions threaten access to food, energy, water, and other ecosystem services, especially in cities. Preventing loss of critical services requires accurate predictions of these risks. To meet this demand, we will train graduate student teams to predict alternative futures and design resilient landscapes. This traineeship program will create a novel, cross-cutting framework for STEM education that combines collaborative and problem-based learning and research, while applying techniques aimed at recruiting and retaining a more diverse student cohort. Trainees will develop new skills in an immersive, team-based education model that also applies new knowledge to real-life applications. Enhanced skills in risk assessment, management, and communication will create a highly skilled workforce that can address the 21st Century threats to human life support systems. The traineeship anticipates preparing 64 Ph.D. students, including 32 funded trainees from the life sciences, engineering, geography, geosciences, natural resources, statistics, economics, and computer science. Ultimately the grant will promote the training of students for jobs as risk analysts in a range of careers, not just in academia, but also in industry, non-profit organizations, and government. In a rapidly urbanizing world, society needs landscapes that are resilient to risks to food, energy, and water, and other ecosystem services (FEWES). The challenge for society is to design landscapes that provide multiple human benefits, maintain ecosystem function, and prove resilient to future risks. This project will address unresolved debates such as whether to develop land intensely, leaving more land untouched (land-sparing) or to develop land moderately, but over a wider area (land-sharing). To resolve such debates and create resilient urban-to-wild landscapes, students will learn how to apply landscape risk assessment to estimate threats, benefits, and uncertainty by exploring landscape linkages and developing scenarios that include socioeconomic impacts for tradeoffs among FEWES. This traineeship will also develop a novel, cross-cutting framework for teaching STEM education by synergistically combining collaborative, problem-based, and service-based learning to assess risks to FEWES. These practices will be combined to develop a unique approach to graduate education called Team-TERRA, or Team-based, Transdisciplinary, Estimation of Risks, and Real-world Analysis. Students will originate from different backgrounds and disciplines and will learn to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. Trainees will earn a certificate in Environmental Risk Assessment by learning how to work with stakeholders, develop quantitative analytical skills in predicting risk and uncertainty, explore options for managing such risks, and communicate risk and uncertainty to clients, stakeholders, and the public. Overall, trainees will learn transferable skills by working with real-world problems, while providing an important service to governments, NGOs, and businesses.The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.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.