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最广泛的陆地生态系统重建的前沿。由于北方森林的生态系统和社会生态系统之间的相互依存关系不甚明了，因此很难理解和管理这一过渡。仅靠特定学科或基于单一物种的方法是无法取得进展的。我们汇集了土著团体、萨斯喀彻温省、艾伯塔省和联邦政府、一个非政府组织、私营和公共行业伙伴以及不同学者组成的多部门伙伴关系。我们的目标是推进一项创新的跨学科计划，对我们认为目前阻碍我们减缓北方平原环境变化步伐并缓冲其影响的最重大知识差距产生明显影响。我们围绕一个渐进的培训计划和七个研究里程碑安排我们的目标，利用广泛的学科范围(技术、生态学、社会生态学)来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、逐渐从相互作用的景观×气候变化的食物链转变，其症状是白尾鹿向北入侵，与之相关的驼鹿和北方驯鹿数量下降。对这些物种的影响可能来自鹿支持的更多捕食者，但也可能是慢性消耗性疾病等紧急疾病的传播。我们的创新和包容性项目旨在从文化和社区福祉的基础上理解和减轻这种对北方粮食系统的生存威胁；而我们以土著STEM为重点的培训计划旨在实现现有的学术、工业和官僚结构的持久变革，这些结构目前主导着加拿大自然资源的管理。归根结底，我们的建议是提供工具、知识、实际选择和包容性能力，以保护不断变化的北方平原生态系统，同时保护核心的社会生态需求和价值观。

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.