Household adaptation amongst hot spots of land degradation vulnerability and bright spots of resilience

是什么导致土地退化？人们如何科普其在区域、次国家和地方范围内的影响和后果？什么样的反应对人类和自然都是有弹性的？ 为了解决这些问题，本项目开发了一种新的方法，利用全球现有数据，查明正在出现的改善生态条件和人类复原力的“亮点”，以及正在出现的土地退化和人类脆弱性的“热点”，以揭示与人类和生态复原力有关的因素。通过对比亮点地区和具有类似生态和社会经济条件的热点地区的驱动因素和反应，研究确定了亮点地区的工作内容，并将其转化为热点地区的行动计划。 这项研究对挑战森林砍伐和土地过渡以及人类适应性反应的理论具有重要意义。该项目将住户调查和社区一级的访谈与嵌入“亮点”和“热点”的无人机图像结合起来。研究结果可能会确定潜在的行为和做法，可以复制，以提高家庭和生态恢复力在全球热带森林边境。该项目增进了对社会和生物物理系统各组成部分之间相互作用的理解，有助于联合国成员国了解实现联合国可持续发展目标和《荒漠化公约》防治荒漠化、土地退化、该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。

What drives land degradation? How do people cope with its impacts and consequences across regional, sub-national, and local scales? What responses are resilient for both humans and nature? To address these questions, this project develops a novel methodology, using globally available data, to identify emerging “bright spots” of improving ecological conditions and human resilience and emerging “hot spots” of land degradation and human vulnerability to reveal factors associated with human and ecological resilience. By contrasting drivers and responses in areas of bright spots and hot spots with similar ecological and socio-economic conditions, the research identifies and translates what worked in bright spots into action plans for hotspot areas. The research has important implications for challenging theories on deforestation and land transitions as well as human adaptive responses. This project integrates household surveys and community-level interviews with drone-derived imagery nested within “bright spots” and “hot spots”. Results may identify potential behaviors and practices that can be replicated to improve household and ecological resilience in tropical forest frontiers globally. The project improves understanding of interactions among social and biophysical system components that can help inform United Nations (UN) member nations of monitoring and evaluation towards achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UNCCD Strategic Objectives for desertification, land degradation, and drought.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.