Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: ARMS to reefs: A new tool to restore coral reef biodiversity, fisheries yields, and human health in Madagascar

该奖项通过贝尔蒙特论坛，为参与由55个国家的全球变化研究倡议竞争性选择的项目的美国研究人员提供支持。 贝尔蒙特论坛是一个由研究供资组织组成的联合会，其重点是支持对全球环境变化挑战和机遇采取跨学科办法。 它的目的是通过调整和调动国际资源，加快提供最迫切需要的国际研究，以消除可持续性的关键障碍。每个伙伴国家都在一个财团内为其研究人员提供资金，以减轻跨越国际边界的资金需求。这一方法有助于有效利用国家资源，支持对具有全球意义的主题进行出色的研究，最好通过多国方法加以解决，同时认识到全球挑战需要全球解决方案。 这种损失威胁到人类的生命，因为珊瑚礁提供食物，收入和海岸线保护。全世界都在努力恢复珊瑚礁，取得了好坏参半的成功。 该项目采用了一种新的方法，通过建造人工礁并在其中种植来自健康珊瑚礁的生物群来重建珊瑚礁生态系统。 该项目将在马达加斯加西南部的拉诺贝湾进行，那里有32公里的海岸线，有13个村庄，人口不断增加，营养不良率不断上升，主要是由于过度捕捞造成的。 主要目标是重建健康的珊瑚礁生态系统，增加马达加斯加的渔业捕捞量，以减少世界上最贫穷国家的营养不良发生率。 该项目的所有方面都将涉及当地科学家和渔民。该项目将利用尖端工具，包括环境DNA条形码、渔民支持的渔业活动全球定位系统跟踪以及广泛的人类健康和福祉数据收集，将生态系统健康与人类健康全面联系起来。 该项目将为其他珊瑚礁恢复项目提供全面的蓝图，彻底测试新技术，创建衡量成功的工具，为人类健康数据收集协议提供描述生态系统的指南。总的来说，这个项目将大大提高海洋资源的公平和可持续利用，并将对全球变化造成的威胁作出反应，所有这些都是一个可以在任何珊瑚礁生态系统发现的地方应用的工具。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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 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.This project focuses on coral reefs – one of the most valuable ecosystems on the planet that are being lost at an alarming rate. This loss threatens human lives because coral reefs provide food, income, and shoreline protection. Efforts are underway worldwide to rehabilitate reefs, with mixed success. This project uses a novel approach to rebuild coral reef ecosystems by building artificial reefs and seeding them with biota from healthy coral reefs. The project will be carried out in Ranobe Bay in southwest Madagascar which contains 32 kilometers of coastline with 13 villages, increasing populations, and growing rates of malnutrition largely caused by overfishing. The primary goal is to rebuild healthy coral reef ecosystems and increase fisheries catch in Madagascar to reduce the incidence of malnutrition in the most impoverished country in the world. All aspects of the project will involve local scientists and fishers. The project will utilize cutting edge tools, including environmental DNA barcoding, fisher supported GPS tracking of fisheries activities, and extensive human health and well-being data collection to comprehensively connect ecosystem health to human health. This project will provide a comprehensive blueprint for other coral reef restoration projects by thoroughly testing a new technology, creating tools to measure success, providing a guide describing the ecosystem to human health data collection protocols. Overall, this project will greatly enhance the equitable and sustainable use of marine resources and will respond to a threat caused by global change, all with a tool that can be applied anywhere coral reef ecosystems are found.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.