Knowledge Co-Production for Collaborative Environmental Management

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在康奈尔大学Karim-Aly Kassam博士的赞助下，该博士后奖学金奖支持早期职业科学家研究知识合作生产过程以及它们如何促进或限制社会学习，目的是为协作环境管理的更多经验知识理论做出贡献。随着全球环境变化的持续加速和加剧，科学和社会正在转向协作环境管理，以促进向可持续性的过渡。知识共同生产等协作方法将来自社会不同部门的不同行动者聚集在一起，共同努力解决社会生态问题。知识共同生产过程已被证明可以促进社会学习，培养适应能力，并通过在管理团队的不同成员之间建立信任和促进沟通来支持集体行动的结果。这项研究的目的是整合当地、土著和科学知识，共同创造一个对过去和未来环境变化的整体理解。该案例研究位于一个保护区内及其周围，该保护区正在经历大坝建设带来的快速、大规模的变化。结合复杂的遥感分析和民族志调查，这项工作将研究(1)不同群体（如政府、科学、土著群体）对保护区的看法和价值，(2)为应对那里发生的变化而出现的预期策略，以及(3)参与者如何在整个知识合作生产过程中体验社会学习。这项研究将对不同的社会文化群体如何概念化和重视他们的环境产生新的理解，这可以帮助我们理解这个系统和世界各地环境变化的关键人为驱动因素。其次，我们将比较和对比当地关于变化的叙述与来自遥感分析的测量结果，揭示互补理解的领域以及科学知识和土著知识之间的关键差距。第三，我们将采用认知建模练习与参与式情景规划相结合，共同生成预测和应对未来环境变化的策略，从而改进这些方法，以便在其他系统中使用。最后，这个项目将提高我们概念化和衡量社会学习的能力，这是迫切需要的方法。与社区成员的讲习班、一份开放获取的跨学科科学教育案例研究、一份项目报告以及至少两篇同行评议的期刊文章将有助于实现这些目标。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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 is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Karim-Aly Kassam at Cornell University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating knowledge co-production processes and how they enable or constrain social learning, with the aim of contributing to more empirically-informed theories of collaborative environmental stewardship. As global environmental change continues to accelerate and intensify, science and society are turning to collaborative environmental management to facilitate transitions to sustainability. Collaborative approaches such as knowledge co-production bring together diverse actors from different sectors of society to work towards solutions for social-ecological problems. Knowledge co-production processes have been shown to facilitate social learning, foster adaptive capacity, and support collective action outcomes by building trust and enabling communication among the diverse members of a management team.The purpose of this research is to integrate local, Indigenous, and scientific knowledge to co-create a holistic understanding of past and future environmental change. The case study is located in and around a protected area that is experiencing rapid, large scale change from the construction of a dam. Using a combination of sophisticated remote sensing analyses and ethnographic inquiry, this work will examine (1) how different groups think about and value the protected area (e.g., governmental, scientific, Indigenous groups), (2) what anticipatory strategies emerge for addressing the changes occurring there, and (3) how participants experience social learning throughout the knowledge co-production process. This research will generate new understanding of how different socio-cultural groups conceptualize and value their environment, which can help us understand critical anthropogenic drivers of environmental change in this system and around the world. Second, we will compare and contrast local narratives of change with measurements derived from remote sensing analyses, revealing areas of complementary understanding as well as critical gaps between scientific and Indigenous knowledge. Third, we will employ cognitive modeling exercises in conjunction with participatory scenario planning to co-generate strategies for anticipating and responding to future environmental change – thus refining these methods for use in other systems. Finally, this project will advance our ability to conceptualize and measure social learning, for which methods are urgently needed. Workshops with community members, an open-access educational case study on transdisciplinary science, a project report, and at least two peer-reviewed journal articles will contribute to achieving these objectives.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.