Collaborative Research: RII Track-2 FEC: Rural Confluence: Communities and Academic Partners Uniting to Drive Discovery and Build Capacity for Climate Resilience

气候变化威胁着美国各地的农村社区，因为他们对自然资源的强烈依赖，以及比城市地区更高的贫困率和更低的适应能力。因此，气候变化可能会对农村社区造成不成比例的影响，但迄今为止大多数气候适应能力研究都集中在城市地区。此外，农村居民在所有科学领域的代表性都很低，这可能会导致对气候变化科学的怀疑，并阻碍集体行动。因此，迫切需要推动农村气候复原力的科学研究，减少农村社区的气候变化脆弱性。该项目寻求通过汇聚密西西比河流域内不同但相互关联的社区、学科和机构的知识、技能和观点来满足这一重要需求。该项目意义重大，因为它将使农村社区参与创建农村气候适应能力的共享框架，预测农村气候变化影响和社区适应能力情景，扩大农村社区的社会和经济机会，并扩大来自农村和代表性不足背景的人的STEM劳动力机会。通过俄克拉荷马州立大学(OSU)、内布拉斯加-林肯大学(UNL)和路易斯安那州立大学(LSU)的教职员工和学生之间的合作，以及拉美裔和美洲原住民服务机构、西俄克拉荷马州立学院和北俄克拉荷马学院的合作，该项目将极大地推动农村气候适应性研究，并为农村STEM机会带来持久的改善。这些合作将为农村重建倡议(OSU)、内布拉斯加州农村繁荣(UNL)和海湾学者计划(LSU)之间的长期伙伴关系奠定基础。该项目旨在通过确定预期的气候变化造成的损失的潜在解决方案，触及数千人的生活，并转化为农村社区的经济影响。将气候复原力研究的重点放在农村社区，有可能弥合农村社区和科学社区之间的鸿沟，同时创建可适用于世界各地其他农村社区的框架和公民参与战略。该项目以认识论包容性为中心，允许农村视角帮助指导调查。研究人员与社区成员合作，共同创造社会稳健的知识，这可以增强对科学的信任，提供新的见解，并为应对气候变化建立社会资本。这个项目的具体目的是：1)与社区共同制定一个共同的概念框架，用于农村气候复原力研究和行动，了解农村的看法和优先事项；2)利用改进的模拟方法，考虑人口减少等缓慢燃烧过程，项目农村气候变化的影响和社区复原力情景；3)通过帮助受影响较大的农村社区扩大社会和经济机会，帮助他们确定和实施与当地相关的气候复原力战略；4)通过开发从K16到职业早期教师的不同职业途径，扩大来自农村和代表性不足背景的人的STEM工作人员参与。该项目将使用辫子河方法创建多样化的农村STEM路径。农村和代表性不足的学生，包括西班牙裔学生和部落民族公民，将受益于新的微观证书、STEM课程和本科生研究机会。该项目还将支持来自农村和代表性不足背景的早期职业教师的发展。该项目的影响将通过对STEM学生和职业早期教师的投资、通过创建开放获取的出版物、课程和模式以及通过制定社区复原力行动计划来持续。将通过与六个重点社区的两年接触周期来测试、评估和改进方法，从而创建可复制的模式。模拟将把最先进的气候预测纳入一套相互关联的开源模型中，以估计在有或没有当地优先考虑的适应措施的情况下的危险暴露、损害和长期社区恢复或衰落。模拟结果将与社区共享，有助于制定当地复原力行动计划。该项目预计将扩展和加快社区复原力建模，是首批开发考虑气候变化和农村人口减少的成对、同时缓慢燃烧扰动的模拟方法之一。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。

Climate change threatens rural communities across the US due to their strong dependence on natural resources and higher poverty rates and lower resilience capacity than urban areas. Thus climate change may disproportionally impact rural communities, but the majority of climate resilience research to date focuses on urban areas. Furthermore, rural residents are underrepresented across all areas of science, which may contribute to skepticism about climate change science and hinder collective action. Therefore, there is a pressing need to advance the science of rural climate resilience and to reduce climate change vulnerabilities in rural communities. This project seeks to meet that important need through the confluence of knowledge, skills, and perspectives from diverse but connected communities, disciplines, and institutions within the Mississippi River basin. The project is significant because it will engage rural communities to create shared frameworks for rural climate resilience, project rural climate change impacts and community resilience scenarios, expand social and economic opportunities for rural communities, and broaden STEM workforce opportunities for people from rural and underrepresented backgrounds. Through the collaborations between faculty and students at Oklahoma State University (OSU), University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), and Louisiana State University (LSU), along with Hispanic and Native American minority-serving institutions, Western Oklahoma State College and Northern Oklahoma College, this project will substantially advance rural climate resilience research and generate lasting improvements in rural STEM opportunities. These collaborations will lay the foundation for long-term partnerships between the Rural Renewal Initiative (OSU), Rural Prosperity Nebraska (UNL), and the Gulf Scholars Program (LSU). The project aims to touch the lives of thousands of people and translate to economic impacts in rural communities by identifying potential solutions to expected climate change-driven losses. Focusing climate resilience research on rural communities creates the potential to bridge the divide between rural and scientific communities, while creating frameworks and civic engagement strategies that may be applied in other rural communities around the world. This project is centered around epistemological inclusivity, which allows rural perspectives to help guide the investigations. Researchers work with community members to co-create socially robust knowledge, which can enhance trust in science, provide new insights, and build social capital for climate resilience. The specific aims of this project are to: 1) Co-develop with communities a shared conceptual framework for rural climate resilience research and action informed by rural perceptions and priorities; 2) Project rural climate change impacts and community resilience scenarios using improved simulation methods accounting for slow-burn processes such as population decline; 3) Expand social and economic opportunities for disproportionately affected rural communities by helping them identify and pursue locally-relevant climate resilience strategies; and 4) Broaden STEM workforce participation for people from rural and underrepresented backgrounds by developing diverse career pathways from K16 to early-career faculty. The project will create diversified rural STEM pathways using a braided river approach. Rural and underrepresented students, including Hispanic students and Tribal Nation citizens, will benefit from new micro-credentials, STEM curriculum, and undergraduate research opportunities. The project will also support the development of Early-Career Faculty from rural and underrepresented backgrounds. Impacts of this project will be sustained through investments in STEM students and Early-Career Faculty; by creation of open-access publications, curriculum, and models; and by development of community resilience action plans. Approaches will be tested, evaluated, and refined through 2-year cycles of engagement with six focus communities, leading to the creation of a replicable model. Simulations will incorporate state-of-the-art climate projections into a suite of interconnected open-source models to estimate hazard exposure, damages, and long-term community recovery or decline with and without locally-prioritized adaptation measures. Simulation results will be shared with the communities, contributing to the development of local resilience action plans. This project is expected to expand and accelerate community resilience modeling, being among the first to develop simulation methods accounting for the paired, simultaneous slow-burn disturbances of climate change and rural depopulation.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.