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

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。冰川的迅速消退提供了一个独特的机会，可以探索环境力量如何塑造人类的行为，同时又被它们塑造。虽然关于日益增加的环境变异性的研究理所当然地继续侧重于了解冰川消退的物理特征，但没有足够的研究解决冰川消退对围绕冰川形成的不断演变的社会景观的影响。因此，复原力和气候适应政策可能会失败，因为它们忽视了最初塑造冰川环境中社会的复杂社会关系和历史特殊性，也没有充分关注随着冰川融化人类与其他人类及其环境的关系是如何演变的。这篇博士论文研究项目询问人类和人与环境的关系如何影响变化中的景观和生计的形成。除了资助对人类学研究生进行实证、科学数据收集和分析方法的培训外，项目成果还将传播给能够优化气候适应政策的组织利益攸关方。该项目还扩大了在科学中代表性不足的群体的参与。这项比较研究项目在两个融化的冰川山谷进行，考察了处于不同位置的利益相关者如何适应、绕过或利用冰川融化。试点研究揭示了一个冰川山谷，在那里，包括土著和其他当地社区、科学家、矿工和政策制定者在内的利益攸关方更关心对新获得的土地和资源的权利，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实际的环境变化经验之间存在潜在差距。通过深入的半结构化访谈和流动的观察启发技术，该项目探索了气候变化对利益攸关方现在和近期未来的影响方式的变化，提供了对全球人类对冰川融化的潜在反应范围的洞察。这项研究的结果提高了对人类-环境系统转变以应对气候变化的科学理解。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.