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依赖程度高，贫困率高，抵御能力低于城市地区。因此，气候变化可能对农村社区产生不成比例的影响，但迄今为止，大多数气候恢复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不足，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，迫切需要推进农村气候适应能力科学，减少农村社区的气候变化脆弱性。该项目旨在通过密西西比河流域内不同但相互联系的社区、学科和机构的知识、技能和观点的融合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，并为农村和代表性不足背景的人扩大STEM劳动力机会。通过俄克拉荷马州立大学（OSU）、内布拉斯加大学林肯分校（UNL）和路易斯安那州立大学（LSU）的师生之间的合作，以及西班牙裔和美洲原住民少数民族服务机构、西俄克拉荷马州立学院和北俄克拉荷马州立学院，该项目将大大推进农村气候适应能力研究，并在农村STEM机会方面产生持久的改善。这些合作将为“农村复兴倡议”（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应对气候变化造成的损失的潜在解决方案，触及成千上万人的生活，并将其转化为农村社区的经济影响。将气候适应能力研究重点放在农村社区，有可能弥合农村社区与科学界之间的鸿沟，同时创建可应用于世界其他农村社区的框架和公民参与战略。该项目以认识论的包容性为中心，允许农村视角帮助指导调查。研究人员与社区成员合作，共同创造对社会有益的知识，这可以增强对科学的信任，提供新的见解，并为气候适应能力建立社会资本。该项目的具体目标是：1)根据农村的观念和优先事项，与社区共同制定农村气候适应能力研究和行动的共同概念框架；2)利用改进的模拟方法预测农村气候变化影响和社区恢复力情景，考虑人口下降等缓慢燃烧过程；3)通过帮助受严重影响的农村社区确定和实施与当地相关的气候适应战略，扩大他们的社会和经济机会；4)通过发展从K16到早期职业教师的多样化职业道路，扩大农村和代表性不足背景人群的STEM劳动力参与。该项目将使用辫状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，将受益于新的微型证书、STEM课程和本科研究机会。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学生和早期职业教师的投资来维持；通过创建开放获取的出版物、课程和模型；制定社区恢复力行动计划。通过与六个重点社区的两年周期接触，将对方法进行测试、评估和改进，从而创建一个可复制的模式。模拟将把最先进的气候预测结合到一套相互关联的开源模型中，以估计有或没有地方优先适应措施的危害暴露、损害和长期社区恢复或下降。模拟结果将与社区分享，有助于制定当地恢复力行动计划。该项目预计将扩大和加速社区恢复力建模，成为首批开发模拟方法的项目之一，该方法考虑了气候变化和农村人口减少这两种同时发生的缓慢扰动。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。

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.