Innovation and interdisciplinary research to understand the causes and mitigate consequences of environmental change in the Boreal Plains

加拿大西部的北方平原可能是北美陆地生态系统重构最广泛的地区。由于对北方针叶林生态和社会生态子系统之间复杂的相互依赖关系知之甚少，因此很难理解和管理这种转变。仅靠特定学科或单一物种的方法无法取得进展。我们建立了土著群体的多部门伙伴关系；萨斯喀彻温省、阿尔伯塔省和联邦政府；一个非政府组织;与私营和公共工业伙伴合作；还有一个多元化的学术团队。我们的目标是推进一个创新和跨学科的项目，对我们认为目前阻碍我们减缓北方平原环境变化速度和缓冲其影响的最重要的知识差距产生明显的影响。我们围绕一个渐进的培训计划和七个研究里程碑来安排我们的目标，这些里程碑涉及广泛的学科范围（技术、生态学、社会生态学），以帮助我们更有效地预测和应对变化。后者包括一种鲜为人知的、从景观与气候变化相互作用中逐渐转变的食物网，其症状之一是白尾鹿向北入侵，伴随着驼鹿和北方驯鹿数量的减少。对这些物种的影响可能来自鹿支持的更丰富的捕食者，也可能来自慢性消耗性疾病等新兴疾病的传播。我们的创新和包容性项目旨在以文化和社区福祉为基础，了解和减轻北方粮食系统面临的生存威胁；而我们以本土stem为重点的培训计划旨在对目前主导加拿大自然资源管理的现有学术、工业和官僚结构进行持久的变革。最终，我们的建议是提供工具、知识、实用选择和包容性能力，以保护不断变化的北方平原生态系统，同时保护核心社会生态需求和价值。

The Boreal Plains of western Canada is at the front of perhaps the most extensive restructuring of a terrestrial ecosystem in North America. Understanding and managing for this transition is made difficult because of poorly understood and complex interdependencies between the ecological and socioecological sub-systems of the boreal forest. Progress cannot be achieved with discipline-specific or single-species based approaches alone. We bring together a multi-sectoral partnership of Indigenous groups; the Saskatchewan, Alberta, and federal governments; an NGO; engaged industrial partners both private and public; and a diverse team of academics. Our goal is to advance an innovative and interdisciplinary program to make a demonstrable impact on what we believe are the most significant knowledge gaps currently impeding our ability to flatten the pace of environmental change in the Boreal Plains and buffer its impacts. We arrange our objectives around a progressive training plan and seven research milestones drawing on a wide disciplinary spectrum (technology, ecology, socioecology) to help us predict and react more effectively to change. The latter includes a poorly understood, gradual shift in the food web from interacting landscape × climate change, a symptom of which is the invasion of white-tailed deer northward with associated declines in populations of moose and boreal caribou. Impacts on these species may come from more abundant predators supported by deer but also transmission of emergent diseases like chronic wasting disease. Our innovative and inclusive project is directed at understanding and mitigating such existential threats to northern food systems at the basis of culture and community well-being; while our Indigenous-STEM focused training plan aims to effect lasting change within the existing academic, industrial, and bureaucratic structures that currently dominate stewardship of Canada's natural resources. Ultimately, our proposal is about providing the tools, knowledge, practical options, and inclusive capacity to conserve the changing Boreal Plains ecosystem while safeguarding core socioecological needs and values.