New approaches to quantifying global ecosystems including dynamical human interactions

量化全球生态系统（包括动态人类互动）的新方法

• 批准号: RGPIN-2020-04889
• 负责人: Galbraith, Eric
• 金额: $ 5.46万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=751010
• 关键词: New; approaches; quantifying; global; ecosystems

Global ecosystems are being transformed at rates that probably have not occurred since the end of the Cretaceous, as a result of human activities. Attempts to understand this transformation are being undertaken by many thousands of researchers, yielding a great wealth of detailed knowledge. But these efforts are often isolated within disciplines, so that the full interacting system - including human activity - is rarely studied within a common quantitative framework. This conceptual fragmentation leaves important gaps in the understanding of how entire ecosystems function within the physical environment of the Earth surface, and ignores the valuable information that observations of humans can potentially shed on ecosystem functioning. My research program builds on my background in modeling climate, biogeochemistry and ecosystems, and is now oriented towards a better understanding of the human-ecosystem interface by developing an integrated, quantitative framework that resolves the global ecosystem including its human component. The approach is built on recent advances in macroecology, that provide a novel means to predict whole terrestrial and marine ecosystems from environmental features with relatively few equations, based on body size and principles of energy flow. These ecosystem models will be coupled to simple representations of human activities, suitable for centennial-timescale integrations and tailored to maximize the use of available data constraints. The general goals are to provide a more holistic understanding of ecosystems, including humans, while shedding new light on the functioning of biological systems by leveraging global observations of human activity. This proposal takes a major step forward through four workpackages. First, the development of a global two-dimensional Surface Earth System Model - the first of its kind - will allow terrestrial and marine ecosystems to be fully integrated with human populations in a computationally-efficient design. Second, a major expansion and refinement of our prior size-based marine ecosystem model, will improve realism and connect ecosystem processes with biogeochemical cycling. Third, construction of new size-based ecosystem approaches for the land surface, tailored to use the large global datasets available for model calibration, and to provide the standard basis for the grid-based ecological components. Fourth, a dynamic, interactive, generalized model of human populations and their activities, which can be applied to simulate the large-scale features of biomass extraction by humans, the ecosystem impacts, and how they changed over human prehistory and history. These four workpackages will achieve critical technical advances, paving the way for further steps in the research program, while contributing to hypothesis development and refinement that are likely to produce unexpected discoveries in the short term.

由于人类活动，全球生态系统正在以自白垩纪末以来可能从未发生过的速度发生变化。成千上万的研究人员试图理解这种转变，产生了大量详细的知识。但这些努力往往是孤立的学科，使完整的相互作用系统-包括人类活动-很少在一个共同的定量框架内研究。这种概念上的割裂在理解整个生态系统如何在地球表面的物理环境中发挥作用方面留下了重要的空白，并忽视了人类观测可能提供的关于生态系统功能的宝贵信息。 我的研究项目建立在我在气候、生物地球化学和生态系统建模方面的背景之上，现在的目标是通过开发一个解决全球生态系统（包括其人类组成部分）的综合定量框架来更好地了解人类与生态系统的界面。该方法是建立在宏观生态学的最新进展，提供了一种新的手段来预测整个陆地和海洋生态系统的环境特征与相对较少的方程，基于身体的大小和能量流的原则。这些生态系统模型将与人类活动的简单表述相结合，适合于百年时间尺度的整合，并适合于最大限度地利用现有的数据限制。总体目标是提供对包括人类在内的生态系统的更全面的了解，同时通过利用对人类活动的全球观测，对生物系统的运作提供新的认识。 该提案通过四个工作包向前迈出了重要一步。首先，全球二维地表地球系统模型的开发-这是第一个此类模型-将使陆地和海洋生态系统能够以计算效率高的设计与人类人口充分结合。其次，我们以前的规模为基础的海洋生态系统模型的一个重大的扩展和完善，将提高现实主义和生态系统过程与地球化学循环连接。第三，为陆地表面构建新的基于大小的生态系统方法，专门使用可用于模型校准的大型全球数据集，并为基于网格的生态组件提供标准基础。第四，人口及其活动的动态，交互式，广义模型，可用于模拟人类生物量提取的大规模特征，生态系统影响以及它们在人类史前史和历史上的变化。这四个工作包将实现关键的技术进步，为研究计划的进一步步骤铺平道路，同时有助于假设的发展和完善，可能在短期内产生意想不到的发现。