DISES: Using continent-wide participatory science to model the dynamic outcomes for humans and birds in a socio-environmental system

喂鸟是人们故意在自家附近吸引野生动物的最常见方式，超过5700万美国人参与了喂鸟。鸟类喂食者可能会影响鸟类的数量和多样性，增加一个地区的捕食者数量，并增加鸟类之间的疾病传播。人们对喂食者所看到的东西的心理反应也会受到影响，这可能会影响他们的精神健康。这个项目解决的问题是，我们如何才能最大限度地发挥鸟类饲养对鸟类和人类的积极好处。为了做到这一点，拥有美国各地1万多名志愿者的参与性科学项目FeederWatch正在进行改造，允许参与者参与被动实验，并输入他们观察到的心理反应的信息。这项研究分析了人们对野生动物的信念、喂养野生动物的动机以及性别、年龄、种族以及身体或智力残疾等人口统计特征是如何影响人们的反应的。整个大陆范围收集的数据也可以研究人和鸟之间的这些联系是如何在季节和从城市到农村地区运行的。该项目还旨在了解和实施如何使鸟类饲养和参与性科学项目多样化，更好地吸引黑人和土著居民、其他有色人种和残疾人的参与。在世界范围内，人们故意改变景观和食物来源，以影响野生动物的行为，并改善自己的结果。这些人类改造的栖息地构成了人类世野生动物栖息地越来越大的部分；然而，这些整合的社会环境系统很少被作为这样的研究对象。拟议的工作重点是鸟类饲养和相关的栖息地管理，这可以说是最常见的有意吸引野生动物的形式，以了解鸟类种群和人类心理健康的社会环境联系和紧急结果。该项目汇集了美国大陆参与式科学家每周收集的社会生态数据、参与式科学家的饲养器管理实验、社会科学调查和实验室实验，以测试关于鸟类饲养的社会环境系统中人类成分和自然成分之间的综合联系的五个假说。这项研究探索了人类影响鸟类及其天敌的各种方式，以及鸟类和它们的天敌影响人类的方式，然后人类改变了它们的行为。这些反应被整合在一起，以了解人类情绪和行为反应对心理健康的总体影响，非生物环境中时空变化的影响，以及鸟类种群和人类心理健康在时间和空间上的紧急结果。这种拟议的跨学科方法调查了参与性科学对社会环境系统研究的关键贡献，并汇集了一支受过社会和生态理论培训并在融合社会-生态科学方面经验丰富的科学家团队。这项工作还吸引了来自美国各地的10,000多名志愿者，其中包括不成比例的高数量女性和身体和精神残疾的人的强烈参与，并专注于提高对目前在观鸟活动中代表性不足的种族群体的包容性。该奖项反映了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。

Bird feeding is the most common way that people intentionally attract wildlife near their homes, with over 57 million Americans involved in bird feeding. Bird feeders can impact the number and diversity of birds, increase the number of predators in an area, and increase disease transmission among birds. People can also be impacted through psychological responses to what they see at their feeders, which can influence their mental well-being. This project addresses the question of how we can maximize the positive benefits of bird feeding for both birds and people. To do so, Project FeederWatch, a participatory science project with more than 10,000 volunteers across the United States who study birds at feeders, is being transformed, allowing participants to be involved in passive experiments and also to input information on their own psychological responses from their observations. This research analyses how people’s responses are impacted by their beliefs about wildlife, motivations for feeding wildlife, and demographic characteristics such as gender, age, race, as well as physical or mental disabilities. The continent-wide scale of the collected data also allows for study of how these links between people and birds operate over seasons and from urban to rural areas. The project also aims to understand and implement how to diversify bird feeding and participatory science projects, better engaging Black and Indigenous people, other people of color, and people with disabilities.Worldwide, people intentionally modify landscapes and food sources to affect wildlife behavior and improve outcomes for themselves. These human-modified habitats constitute a growing portion of wildlife habitat in the Anthropocene; yet, these integrated socio-environmental systems have rarely been studied as such. The proposed work focuses on bird feeding and associated habitat management, arguably the most common form of intentional wildlife attraction, to understand socio-environmental links and emergent outcomes for bird populations and human mental well-being. This project brings together social-ecological data collected weekly by participatory scientists across the continental U.S., feeder management experiments by participatory scientists, social science surveys, and laboratory experiments to test five hypotheses about the integrated links between human components and natural components of the socio-environmental system of bird feeding. The diverse ways in which humans impact birds and their natural enemies and the ways in which birds and their natural enemies influence humans, who then alter their behavior, are explored in this research. These responses are integrated to understand overall effects of the human emotional and behavioral responses on mental well-being, effects of spatial and temporal variation in the abiotic environment, and emergent outcomes for bird populations and human mental well-being over time and space. This proposed transdisciplinary approach investigates the crucial contribution that participatory science can make to socio-environmental systems research, and brings together a team of scientists trained in social and ecological theories and experienced in convergent social-ecological science. The work also engages more than 10,000 volunteers from across the U.S, including a disproportionately high number of women and strong participation of those with physical and mental disabilities, and focuses on improving inclusivity for ethno-racial groups that are currently underrepresented in birdwatching.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.