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己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。鸟类饲养者会影响鸟类的数量和多样性，增加一个地区捕食者的数量，并增加鸟类之间的疾病传播。人们也会对他们在喂食器上看到的东西产生心理反应，这可能会影响他们的心理健康。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喂养对鸟类和人类的积极效益。为了做到这一点，“喂食观察项目”（Project feedwatch）正在进行转型，这是一个参与性的科学项目，有超过1万名志愿者在美国各地研究喂食器旁的鸟类。该项目允许参与者参与被动实验，也允许他们从观察中输入自己的心理反应信息。这项研究分析了人们对野生动物的看法、喂养野生动物的动机以及性别、年龄、种族、身体或精神残疾等人口特征如何影响人们的反应。在整个大陆范围内收集的数据还可以研究人与鸟类之间的这些联系是如何随季节变化以及从城市到农村地区的。该项目还旨在了解和实施如何使鸟类喂养和参与性科学项目多样化，更好地吸引黑人和土著人民、其他有色人种和残疾人。在世界范围内，人们有意地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。这些人类改造过的栖息地构成了人类世野生动物栖息地中越来越大的一部分；然而，这些综合的社会环境系统很少被这样研究。拟议的工作重点是鸟类喂养和相关的栖息地管理，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科学家每周收集的社会生态数据，参与科学家的饲料管理实验，社会科学调查和实验室实验，以测试关于鸟类喂养社会环境系统中人类成分和自然成分之间综合联系的五个假设。本研究探讨了人类影响鸟类及其天敌的多种方式，以及鸟类及其天敌影响人类的方式，进而改变人类的行为。将这些反应整合起来，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随时间和空间变化的紧急结果。这个提议的跨学科方法调查了参与式科学对社会环境系统研究的重要贡献，并汇集了一个在社会和生态理论方面受过训练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1万多名志愿者，其中包括不成比例的女性和身体和精神残疾者的积极参与，并致力于提高目前在观鸟中代表性不足的少数民族群体的包容性。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。

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.