BE/CNH: Complex Ecosystem Interactions Over Multiple Spatial and Temporal Scales: The Biocomplexity of Sanak Island

大北太平洋地区是世界上最重要的渔场之一。最近，该地区许多物种的数量急剧减少，使生物学家感到困惑，造成了全面的、信息不足的管理决策，并引发了许多阿拉斯加土著村庄的文化解体。20世纪收集的数据表明，在物种丰富的时期之后，也有其他一些物种生产力低下的时期。这些模式在过去5000年的古生态和考古资料中也很明显，从而强调了一个核心问题的关键特征：考虑到北太平洋地区人类、鲑鱼、底栖鱼、海洋哺乳动物、鸟类和许多其他物种的不同种群周期，以及更高营养水平的不同收成，人们如何维持种群、生态系统以及依赖于它们的社会、政治、经济和文化身份的民族和文化？为了调查阿拉斯加州阿留申群岛的萨纳克岛及其周围自然系统和人类系统之间复杂的相互作用，一个跨学科研究小组将把人类作为北部生态系统的一部分进行研究。调查人员将审查现代和史前、陆地和海洋、地方和区域系统之间的相互关系，包括经验和理论探索。在之前的项目中，研究人员观察到，土著阿留申人不仅仅是简单和被动的收割机，而是一个地区生态系统的积极参与者，其中包括他们作为重要力量。这种方法的含义需要整合人类学，考古学，地质学，生态学，数学，气候学和历史学，许多空间和时间尺度的视角，以及许多领域的理论方法的无缝融合。因为阿留申人几千年来一直在北太平洋上采集资源，他们作为生态系统工程师，作为食物网和景观的更普通的组成部分，作为一个主要由气候和地貌演化等外部力量驱动的世界的被动反应者，被纳入了岛上生态系统的模型和重建中。这个项目将导致发展和应用从复杂系统的研究中得出的现代分析技术，以便更好地了解人类在历史和地球功能中的作用。研究人员正在构建和分析第一个跨越千年时间尺度的广泛食物网。该项目的独特之处在于它广泛明确地将人作为食物网的组成部分。研究人员正在开发从数据中提取信息的技术，其中错误必然与时间段相混淆，该项目将产生可以跨时间进行比较的数据。研究人员正在广泛开发和测试来自不同来源的数据接口方法，这些数据本身在分辨率和数据结构上存在差异（例如，古丘，通过代理和建模重建气候，各种直接人口普查），并且他们正在扩大稳定同位素的应用，以研究强调大尺度生态系统结构和功能的生态和古生态现象。研究人员还将为生态系统的多样性和生产力之间的关系带来新的视角，在很长的时间尺度上比较系统，他们将促进对食物网和生态系统结构和动态的可持续模式的理解。该项目将结合土著知识、当地历史和社区对数据收集的直接参与，并将通过合作和对直接影响其日常生活的海洋政策的分析，使居民在科学建议的过程中拥有发言权。该项目将提供关键的科学数据，为有关人类在北太平洋生态系统动态中作用的长期数据的政策提供信息，并将阐明长期以来生态系统中历史变化基线的状态。研究人员正在探索一种在这种环境下进行科学研究的新方法，即把当地人作为复杂生态系统的一部分，而不是作为受外部管制的外部影响。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。

The greater North Pacific region is one of the world's most important fisheries. Recent dramatic decreases in the numbers of many species in this region have perplexed biologists, caused sweeping and underinformed management decisions, and provoked cultural disintegration of many Alaska Native villages. Date gathered during the 20th century show that there have been other periods of low productivity for species, often followed by periods of abundance. These patterns also are evident in paleoecological and archaeological data from the last 5,000 years, thereby emphasizing the critical character of a central question: Given varying population cycles of humans, salmon, groundfish, sea mammals, birds, and many other species in the North Pacific region as well as varying harvests by the higher trophic levels, how do people sustain populations, ecosystems, and the peoples and cultures who depend on them for social, political, economic, and cultural identity? To investigate the complex interactions among natural and human systems on and around Sanak Island in the Aleutian chain of Alaska, an interdisciplinary research team will study humans as part of the northern ecosystem. The investigators will examine interrelationships among the modern and prehistoric, terrestrial and marine, and local and regional systems, including both empirical and theoretical explorations. In previous projects, the investigators have observed that the indigenous Aleut were not just simple and passive harvesters but were active participants in a regional ecosystem that includes them as significant forces. The implications of this approach require the integration of anthropology, archaeology, geology, ecology, mathematics, climatology, and history, the perspective of many spatial and temporal scales, and the seamless merging of theoretical approaches from many fields. Because the Aleut have been harvesting resources on the north Pacific for thousands of years, they have been included in models and reconstructions of the island's ecosystem as ecosystem engineers, as more ordinary components of food webs and landscapes, and as passive responders to a world that is primarily driven by largely external forces like climate and geomorphic evolution.This project will result in development and application of modern analytical techniques drawn from the study of complex systems in order to better understand the roles of peoples in the history and functioning of the Earth. The investigators are constructing and analyzing the first extensive food webs that extend over millennial time scales. The project is distinctive because of its extensive explicit inclusion of people as components of food webs. The investigators are pioneering the development of techniques for extracting information from data in which error is necessarily confounded with time period, and the project will yield data that can be compared across times. The investigators are extensively developing and testing methods for interfacing data from diverse sources that inherently differ in resolution and data structure (e.g., ancient middens, climate reconstruction by proxy and modeling, various direct censuses), and they are expanding the application of stable isotopes to study ecological and paleoecological phenomena that emphasize large-scale ecosystem structure and function. The investigators also will bring new perspectives to the relationships of diversity and productivity of ecosystems, comparing systems across very long time scales , and they will advance understanding of sustainable patterns of food web and ecosystem structures and dynamics. The project will incorporate indigenous knowledge, local history, and direct community participation in data collection, and it will give residents a voice in the process of scientific advisement through both collaboration and through the analysis of marine policy that directly affects their daily lives. The project will provide critical scientific data to inform policy regarding long-term data on the role of humans in the dynamics of North Pacific ecosystems, and it will illuminate the state of historical shifting baselines in the ecosystem over deep time. The investigators are exploring a new way of doing scientific research in this kind of setting by incorporating local people as part of a complex ecosystem rather than an external impact to be externally regulated. 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.