Critical Zones in Global Environmental Change

人类活动改变环境变化的自然过程的方式以及这种变化对人类的影响并不均匀地分布在全球各地。由于人类和自然属性的特殊组合，一些地区特别容易因人与环境的相互作用而加速变化过程。该项目将开始建立一个方法框架，对世界上五个情况被评估为特别严重的地区--墨西哥盆地、亚马逊盆地的一部分、北海、咸海和喜马拉雅的一部分--的人与环境的相互作用进行系统的比较研究。将在每个地点进行案例研究，以确定和评估正在改变环境变化自然过程的人类力量、社会对这些影响日益增长的认识以及社会对这些变化作出反应的性质。所有案例研究都将采用共同的研究方法，以确保结果的可比性。这项工作将由一个具有互补技能的学者组成的中央研究团队和一个国际顾问委员会协调，但大部分研究将由以每个研究领域为基础并熟悉每个研究领域的学者进行。这项研究还将与国际地理联盟研究小组的相关活动协调。这项研究将为在世界五个关键地区对人与环境的相互作用进行一系列重要的密集、比较的案例研究奠定基础。在分析的这一阶段开始并可能在未来几年继续进行的研究将为研究区域本身的人类和自然过程提供重要的新见解，但更重要的是，研究将提供关于人类对自然环境变化的影响和反应的全球模式和过程的概括性知识。这项研究还将建立一个在其他地区推广的框架，以进一步增进对这一重要专题的了解。

The ways in which human activities are altering natural processes of environmental change and the impacts of that change on humans are not evenly distributed across the globe. Because of special combinations of human and natural attributes, some locales are especially prone toward accelerated processes of change induced by human-environmental interactions. This project will begin the establishment of a methodological framework for the systematic, comparative study of human-environmental interactions in five parts of the world where the situation has been assessed as especially critical -- the Mexico Basin, part of the Amazon basin, the North Sea, the Aral Sea, and a part of the Himalayas. Case studies will be undertaken in each of these locales to identify and evaluate the human forces that are altering natural processes of environmental change, the growing societal awareness of these impacts, and the nature of societal responses to those changes. Common research approaches will be used in all case studies to ensure comparability of results. The work will be coordinated by a central research team of scholars with complementary skills and by an international board of advisors, but much of the research will be conducted by scholars based in and familiar with each of study areas. The research also will be coordinated with related activities of study groups of the International Geographic Union. This research will lay the groundwork for an important series of intensive, comparative case studies of human-environmental interaction in five critical parts of the world. The research beginning in this phase of the analysis and likely to continue in future years will provide significant new insights about human and natural processes in the study areas themselves, but more importantly, the research will provide generalizable knowledge about global patterns and processes of human impacts on and responses to natural environmental change. The study will also establish a framework for replication in other locales in order to further increase understandings about this critical topic.