DISES: Cumulative effects of ecological and social stressors on the dynamics of integrated ranching-wildlife systems: drought, wolves, and human decision-makers

疾病：生态和社会压力源对综合牧场-野生动物系统动态的累积影响：干旱、狼和人类决策者

• 批准号: 2317537
• 负责人: Chloe Wardropper
• 金额: $ 159.78万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-10-01 至 2026-10-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2317537&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DISES; Cumulative; effects; ecological; social

As environmental changes intensify around the world, both humans and wildlife face greater uncertainty and risk, threatening both human livelihoods and wildlife biodiversity. This research seeks to understand how multiple sources of stress impact humans, free-ranging livestock, and wildlife in shared rangelands in the western US. Increasingly frequent and more severe droughts make plant forage for wild herbivores and cattle less predictable and abundant, even as the return of gray wolves to parts of the landscape increases predation risk. As a result, wildlife such as deer and elk, as well as free-ranging livestock, may be forced to trade off food and security, and ranchers grazing their cattle on public land may face more uncertainty. This research will assess (1) how drought and wolves interact to affect wild herbivores and free-ranging cattle distributions across the landscape, (2) how decision-makers respond to these two sources of stress, and (3) how information, provided via a new wildlife and plant forecasting application, is received and used by both ranchers and wildlife managers. The project will also increase public awareness of human and wildlife connections and interactions in rangeland ecosystems via a documentary film, as well as by training citizen scientists to classify camera-trapped images of rangeland wildlife. A diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students as well as a post-doctoral researcher will be trained over the course of this project. Outcomes of this project include a better understanding of how climate and carnivore risks affect human decision-making, as well as how humans impact rangeland food webs via cattle stocking and wildlife removal, potentially leading to increased opportunities for coexistence between humans and wildlife in changing environments.Ecological shifts brought about by climatic change can strongly interact with other sources of change, such as recolonizing large carnivores, to alter food web dynamics and potentially reduce ecosystem provisioning for humans. The uncertainty created by such interactions also challenges human decision-making. A critical gap exists in our knowledge of how climate change affects human-wildlife systems via wild food webs, and how natural resource decision-makers respond to such stress. We hypothesize that multiple environmental stressors (e.g., climate change and novel predators) will have complex and interactive effects on human-wildlife systems. Effects will likely occur via trophic interactions among predators, prey, domestic animals, and plants within shared food webs, potentially reducing the provisioning of humans from the shared ecosystem and human tolerance for predatory and competitive wildlife, and increasing uncertainty for natural resource decision-makers. There is a pressing need to advance models, tools and theory to (A) understand how multiple stressors interactively affect food webs in which humans and domestic animals are embedded, and (B) identify and quantify feedbacks among natural resource decision-makers and human-wildlife systems in response to multiple environmental stressors. Such information would assist in identifying potential “tipping points” in system resiliency and allow for better management of interacting wildland and agricultural systems. Using a factorial design of study sites across combinations of wolf presence and drought in Oregon and Idaho, we will study rancher-wildlife-plant dynamics. Data will stem from rancher surveys, wildlife camera grids, and ground-surveyed and remotely-sensed plant data. We will integrate social and ecological data into a structural equation modeling framework, which will drive ecological forecasts of predation and competition risk to livestock for ranchers and managers to use in future decision making. To understand natural resource manager decisions, which occur at larger spatial scales than rancher decisions, we will conduct a broad-scale analysis of the rangeland SES across the Western US using publicly-available wildlife and social data and remotely-sensed environmental characteristics. By analyzing decision-making across these spatial scales, we anticipate being able to identify key feedbacks, emergent phenomena, and potential tipping points in resilience for the human and wildlife components of the rangeland SES.This project is jointly funded by the Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.

随着世界各地环境变化加剧，人类和野生动物都面临更大的不确定性和风险，威胁着人类生计和野生动物生物多样性。这项研究旨在了解多种压力来源如何影响美国西部共享牧场中的人类、自由放养的牲畜和野生动物。越来越频繁和更严重的干旱使得野生食草动物和牛的植物饲料变得更加不可预测和丰富，尽管灰狼返回部分地区增加了捕食风险。因此，鹿和麋鹿等野生动物以及散养的牲畜可能被迫在粮食和安全之间进行权衡，而在公共土地上放牧的牧场主可能面临更多的不确定性。这项研究将评估（1）干旱和狼如何相互作用影响野生食草动物和自由放养的牛在整个景观中的分布，（2）决策者如何应对这两种压力源，以及（3）牧场主和野生动物管理者如何接收和使用通过新的野生动物和植物预测应用程序提供的信息。该项目还将通过纪录片以及培训公民科学家对牧场野生动物的相机拍摄图像进行分类，提高公众对牧场生态系统中人类和野生动物的联系和互动的认识。在该项目过程中，将培训一批多元化的本科生和研究生以及博士后研究员。该项目的成果包括更好地了解气候和食肉动物风险如何影响人类决策，以及人类如何通过放养牲畜和清除野生动物来影响牧场食物网，这可能会增加人类和野生动物在不断变化的环境中共存的机会。气候变化带来的生态变化可以与其他变化来源强烈相互作用，例如重新殖民大型食肉动物，从而改变食物网动态并可能减少 为人类提供生态系统。这种相互作用产生的不确定性也挑战了人类的决策。我们对气候变化如何通过野生食物网影响人类-野生动物系统，以及自然资源决策者如何应对这种压力的认识存在重大差距。我们假设多种环境压力源（例如气候变化和新型捕食者）将对人类-野生动物系统产生复杂且相互作用的影响。影响可能是通过共享食物网内的捕食者、猎物、家畜和植物之间的营养相互作用而发生，可能会减少共享生态系统对人类的供应以及人类对捕食性和竞争性野生动物的容忍度，并增加自然资源决策者的不确定性。迫切需要改进模型、工具和理论，以（A）了解多种压力源如何交互影响人类和家畜所处的食物网，以及（B）识别和量化自然资源决策者和人类-野生动物系统之间针对多种环境压力源的反馈。此类信息将有助于识别系统弹性的潜在“临界点”，并允许更好地管理相互作用的荒地和农业系统。我们将利用俄勒冈州和爱达荷州狼存在和干旱组合的研究地点的析因设计，研究牧场主-野生动物-植物动态。数据将来自牧场主调查、野生动物摄像机网格以及地面调查和遥感植物数据。我们将把社会和生态数据整合到结构方程模型框架中，这将推动对牲畜的捕食和竞争风险的生态预测，供牧场主和管理者在未来的决策中使用。为了了解自然资源管理者的决策（这些决策发生在比牧场主决策更大的空间尺度上），我们将利用公开的野生动物和社会数据以及遥感环境特征对美国西部的牧场社会经济地位进行广泛的分析。通过分析这些空间尺度上的决策，我们预计能够识别关键反馈、突发现象以及牧场 SES 中人类和野生动物组成部分恢复力的潜在临界点。该项目由综合社会环境系统动力学 (DISES) 和刺激竞争性研究既定计划 (EPSCoR) 联合资助。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命 通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，并被认为值得支持。