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最广泛的重组的前沿。理解和管理这一过渡是困难的，因为了解甚少和复杂的生态和社会生态子系统的北方森林之间的相互依存关系。单靠针对具体学科或基于单一物种的方法无法取得进展。我们汇集了土著群体的多部门合作伙伴关系;萨斯喀彻温省，阿尔伯塔和联邦政府;一个非政府组织;从事私人和公共的工业合作伙伴;和学者的多元化团队。我们的目标是推进一个创新的跨学科计划，对我们认为目前阻碍我们在北方平原平坦化环境变化步伐并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，这些里程碑借鉴了广泛的学科范围（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。后者包括对食物网从相互作用的景观×气候变化的逐渐转变知之甚少，其症状之一是白尾鹿向北入侵，驼鹿和北方驯鹿的数量随之下降。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突发疾病的传播。我们的创新和包容性的项目是针对理解和减轻这种存在的威胁北方粮食系统的文化和社区福祉的基础;而我们的土著-干重点培训计划旨在影响持久的变化在现有的学术，工业和官僚结构，目前占主导地位的加拿大的自然资源的管理。最终，我们的提案是关于提供工具，知识，实用选项和包容性能力，以保护不断变化的北方平原生态系统，同时维护核心的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.