PIRE: Co-Creating Research and Education Capacities to Understand, Visualize and Mitigate Climate-Change Impact Cascades and Inequities in Central Mexico

这一消息带来了越来越多关于气候变化在世界各地影响日益严重的报道：水库萎缩、严重干旱、洪水、森林火灾和危险的热浪，仅举几例。这些影响超出了人类的经验，让我们措手不及，因此正在造成生命、生计和财产的灾难性损失。更糟糕的是，一次冲击往往会产生多米诺骨牌效应或“冲击级联”。越来越明显的是，尽管气候变化将影响我们所有人，但我们中的一些人面临的风险比其他人更大。那些生活在社会边缘的人，在社会和经济压力下，将遭受最大的损失，也是准备最少的。该项目动员美国和墨西哥的不同合作伙伴和社会团体了解、想象和应对气候变化对墨西哥城及其周围的水资源、生态系统、食品和农业、健康和生计的各种影响。它还揭示了这些影响如何随着人口和景观的不同而不同。研究人员整合了各种数据--包括降雨量、温度、人口、土地利用/土地覆盖--以及预测未来影响的工具。首要目标是创造新的方法来模拟和虚拟居住未来的气候变化/影响情景，供社区和政策制定者用来实施缓解措施。因此，这个项目重新设想了研究、政策、社区行动和教育可以联合起来应对气候变化和社会正义的方式。其结果将不仅适用于美国和墨西哥，而且适用于全球。该项目还支持对克拉克大学研究生的培训，特别是对科学方面代表性不足群体的培训，以及与公众的接触。不同的社会群体如何共同理解复杂的气候变化对水、生态系统、食品、健康和生计的影响？我们如何绘制影响不平等的地图并建立模型？我们如何改变治理和社会学习，以规划可持续的、社会公正的、适应气候变化的道路？在这里，该团队的工作环境是这一全球气候和可持续发展挑战的有力象征：包括墨西哥城在内的墨西哥-勒马-库萨马拉水文区。为了第一次做出回应，他们的方法结合了协同效应中的四个组成部分：c1)与合作伙伴(包括试点社区)共同创建基于开源地理信息系统/遥感的区域气候变化地图集，以绘制社会、气候和环境条件的地图并进行空间分析；c2)共同创建一个由地理信息系统提供信息的系统动力学模型，代表气候变化、水、人口、城市化、土地利用/土地覆盖变化、生态系统、食物、健康和生计之间的相互作用/影响--并揭示影响不平等和不公正；C3)试验扩展现实(XR)决策分析，模拟气候变化/发展情景不同的利益相关者可以虚拟地居住在一起，并在C1和C2的指导下进行互动；C4)研究和教育的整合，使它们相互促进，包括共同创建课程和实地研究，美国学生和他们在墨西哥的同龄人可以作为学习团队一起体验。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。

The news brings more and more reports of the growing impacts of climate change around the world: shrinking water reservoirs, severe drought, flooding, forest fires and dangerous heat waves, to name a few. These impacts are beyond human experience, catching us off-guard and therefore are causing catastrophic losses to lives, livelihoods, and properties. To make matters worse, one impact often has a domino effect or "impact cascade". It is becoming clear that, while climate change will impact us all, some of us are more at risk than others. Those living of the ‘edges’ of society, under social and economic stress, will suffer the most and are the least prepared. This project mobilizes diverse partners and social groups in the U.S. and Mexico to understand, visualize, and address the myriad impacts of climate change on water resources, ecosystems, food and agriculture, health, and livelihoods - in and around Mexico City. It also reveals how these impacts vary across populations and landscapes. The researchers integrate diverse data - including rainfall, temperature, population, land use/land cover - and tools to anticipate future impacts. The overarching goal is to create new ways to simulate and virtually inhabit future climate change/impact scenarios to be used by communities and policy makers to implement mitigation measures. This project, thus, re-imagines the way research, policy, community action, and education can join forces to address climate change and social justice. Its outcomes will be applicable not only in the U.S. and Mexico, but globally. The project also supports the training of graduate students at Clark University, notably from underrepresented groups in science, and outreach to the public. How do diverse social groups co-create a shared understanding of complex climate-change impact cascades to water, ecosystems, food, health, livelihoods? How do we map and model impact inequities? How do we transform governance and social learning to chart sustainable, socially just, climate-resilient pathways? Here, the team works in a setting powerfully emblematic of this global climate and sustainability challenge: Mexico-Lerma-Cutzamala Hydrological Region, that includes Mexico City. To respond, for the first time, their approach combines four components in synergy: C1) Co-creation with partners (including pilot communities) of an open-source GIS/Remote Sensing-based Regional Climate-Change Atlas to map and spatially analyze social, climate and environmental conditions; C2) Co-creation of a System Dynamics Model informed by GIS, representing interactions/impacts among climate change, water, population, urbanization, land-use/land cover change, ecosystems, food, health, and livelihoods – and revealing of impact inequities and injustice; C3) Piloting of eXtended Reality (XR) decision analysis, simulating climate-change/development scenarios diverse stakeholders can inhabit virtually and interact with in groups, informed by C1 and C2; C4) Integration of research and education such that they reinforce each other, including the co-creation of courses and field research that U.S. students and their peers in Mexico can experience together as learning teams.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.