Doctoral Dissertation Research: Variation in Socio-Environmental System Response to Glacial Recession

该奖项全部或部分根据2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。快速的冰川衰退提供了一个独特的机会，探索环境力量如何塑造人类的行为，同时也被他们塑造。虽然关于环境变异性增加的研究无疑继续侧重于了解冰川退缩的物理特征，但没有足够的研究涉及冰川退缩对冰川周围不断演变的社会创造的景观的影响。因此，复原力和气候适应政策可能会失败，因为它们忽视了冰川环境中社会形成的复杂的社会关系和历史特点，而这些社会关系和历史特点开始就没有充分注意到随着冰川融化，人类与其他人及其环境的关系如何演变。这个博士论文研究项目询问人类和人类环境关系如何影响景观和生计的形成。除了为培训一名人类学研究生提供资金，使其掌握经验科学数据收集和分析方法外，还将向能够优化气候适应政策的组织利益攸关方传播项目成果。这一比较研究项目在两个冰川融化的山谷中进行，考察了地理位置不均衡的利益攸关方如何适应、规避或利用冰川融化。试点研究显示，在一个冰川谷，土著和其他地方社区、科学家、矿工和决策者等利益攸关方更关心的是对新获得的土地和资源提出权利要求，而不是即将出现的水资源短缺。这表明，侧重于脆弱性的气候适应政策与环境变化的实际生活经验之间存在潜在差距。通过深入和半结构化的访谈和移动的观察启发技术，该项目探讨了气候变化影响利益攸关方现在和不久的将来的方式的变化，提供了对全球一级人类对冰川融化的潜在反应范围的见解。该研究成果提高了对人类环境系统应对气候变化的转变的科学理解。该奖项反映了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 is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Rapid glacier recession presents a unique opportunity to explore how environmental forces shape human actions while being shaped by them in return. While research on increasing environmental variability justifiably continues to focus on understanding the physical characteristics of glacier retreat, not enough research addresses the impacts of glacial retreat on evolving, socially created landscapes built around glaciers. As a result, resiliency and climate adaptation policies may fail because they ignore the complex social relationships and historical particularities that shaped societies in glacial environments to begin with and pay insufficient attention to how human relationships with both other humans and their environment evolve as glaciers melt. This doctoral dissertation research project asks how human and human-environmental relations influence the formation of transforming landscapes and livelihoods. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project results will be disseminated to organizational stakeholders that can optimize climate adaptation policies. This project also broadens the participation of groups underrepresented in science.This comparative research project, conducted in two melting glacial valleys, examines how unevenly situated stakeholders adapt to, circumvent or exploit glacial melt. Pilot research revealed a glacial valley where stakeholders, including indigenous and other local communities, scientists, miners and policymakers, were more concerned with claiming rights to newly accessible land and resources than with impending water scarcity. This points to a potential gap between climate adaptation policies, focused on vulnerability, and actual lived experiences of environmental change. Via in-depth and semi-structured interviews and mobile observational elicitation techniques, this project explores variation in the ways which climate change impacts stakeholders’ present and immediate future, providing insights into the potential range of human responses to glacial melt at a global level. Results from the research improve scientific understanding of the transformation of human-environmental systems in response to climate change.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.