BE/CNH: The Kuril Biocomplexity Project: Human Vulnerability and Resilience to Subarctic Change

亚北极沿海社区今天面临着自然和人为引起的环境变化以及获取关键粮食资源的变化。这些社区的适应能力受到地方和全球社会、政治和经济网络参与的制约和促进。了解这些相互作用的复杂性对于有效管理人类对亚北极和其他地区变化的反应至关重要。这个研究项目将汇集一个由美国、日本和俄罗斯学者和学生组成的跨学科团队，研究西北太平洋千岛群岛5000年来人类与环境相互作用的历史。在过去的五千年中，在不同的社会、经济和技术制度下，人类在不同时期的殖民、持续和遗弃的证据将被用来研究人类对灾难性和渐进的环境变化（包括人类引起的变化）的脆弱性和恢复力。该项目的主要目标包括：(1)了解气候、海冰、海洋和陆地生态以及人类活动之间的反馈；(2)在不同时空尺度上估算人类对灾难性事件的脆弱性及其生态后果；(3)评估文化变量在影响社区生存和影响环境变化中的作用。这些目标将通过对人类住区和遗弃的考古和历史记录进行生态综合研究来实现；火山爆发、地震和海啸的地质证据；过去植被和海洋条件的古生态学和海洋学证据；以及过去温度、海冰和风暴的气候证据。该领域在三个夏季收集的证据将用于测试和校准基于主体的计算机模型和模拟。将运行数值模型来检测影响人类复原力和脆弱性的最关键的社会、生态和物理变量。该项目将包括与日本北海道土著阿伊努人社区建立教育和外展伙伴关系；通过华盛顿大学伯克自然历史和文化博物馆开发中学教育工具包和交互式计算机模拟；以及本科生和研究生在整个项目中的参与。这项研究将对理解人类与自然耦合系统的复杂性作出重大贡献。该研究将推进人类生态动力学理论，以及社会和技术变量如何缓冲或加剧人类对不可预测的生态变化和灾难性事件的脆弱性。该项目将开发新的建模工具，以促进跨学科的整合和理解。它将提供可适应其他情况和现代条件的模式，在这些情况下，沿海社区似乎特别容易受到其无法控制的环境和社会因素的影响。更一般地说，这项研究将以模型原型的形式提供工具，这些工具可以适应人类环境动态复杂的许多不同地区。该项目得到了2005年度环境生物复杂性特别竞赛的支持，该竞赛侧重于自然和人类系统耦合动力学。

Subarctic coastal communities today face natural and human induced changes in the environment and in access to critical food resources. How well these communities can adapt is both constrained and facilitated by engagement in local and global social, political, and economic networks. Understanding the complexity of these interactions is critical to the effective management of human response to change in the subarctic and elsewhere. This research project will bring together an interdisciplinary team of American, Japanese, and Russian scholars and students to examine the 5,000-year history of human-environmental interactions along the Kuril Island chain in the northwest Pacific. Evidence of human colonization, persistence and abandonment at various times in the past five millennia and under different social, economic, and technological regimes will be used to study human vulnerability and resilience to both catastrophic and gradual environmental changes, including human-induced changes. The project's primary objectives include (1) understanding feedbacks among climate, sea ice, marine and terrestrial ecology, and human activity; (2) estimating the degree of human vulnerability to catastrophic events and their ecological consequences at different spatial and temporal scales; and (3) assessing the role of cultural variables both in influencing community survival and affecting environmental changes. These objectives will be tackled through an ecologically integrated study of archaeological and historic records of human settlement and abandonment; geologic evidence of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis; paleoecologic and oceanographic evidence of past vegetation and marine conditions; and climatological evidence of past temperature, sea ice, and storminess. Evidence collected in the field over three summers will be used to test and calibrate agent-based computer models and simulations. Numerical models will be run to detect the most critical social, ecological, and physical variables affecting human resilience and vulnerability. The project will include education and outreach partnerships with indigenous Ainu communities in Hokkaido, Japan; the development of secondary school education kits and interactive computer simulations through the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington; and the participation of undergraduate and graduate students throughout the project.This study will make significant contributions to understanding the complexity of coupled human and natural systems. The research will advance the theory of human ecological dynamics and of the ways social and technological variables buffer or aggravate human vulnerability to unpredictable ecological changes and catastrophic events. This project will develop new modeling tools to facilitate interdisciplinary integration and understanding. It will provide models that can be adapted to other contexts and modern conditions where coastal communities appear particularly vulnerable to environmental and social factors beyond their control. More generally, this research will provide tools in the form of model prototypes that can be adapted to many different regions where human-environmental dynamics are complex. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2005 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.