Agents of Change: Infrastructure Change, Human Agency, and Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems

新建道路给地区带来了复杂的变化，包括生态退化、社会冲突和经济发展。 “道路生态学”是为了研究运输系统和生态学而出现的，但需要更多地关注人类作为环境变化推动者的作用，重点是生计决定和资源使用。 人们不仅仅是对新的基础设施做出反应。 它们还产生生态和体制变化，反过来又产生影响人类福祉的反馈效应。 在这个跨学科的研究项目中，研究人员将使用一个复杂的系统框架，通过基础设施和土地保有制度的界面，将社会生态系统作为一个整体来关注。 他们将借鉴弹性的概念，复杂系统的属性，并重新制定它的系统组件，关系，创新和连续性，这提供了一种手段，观察系统特性相关的保留或丢失的系统身份。 他们还将扩大连通性的概念，考虑其重要性，不仅是作为带来外部区域外部冲击的基础设施联系，而且作为地方行为者和进程之间的联系网络。 这些想法激发了对连通性和弹性的特定期望，无论是在社会生态系统的规模还是系统内的特定组件。 研究人员将研究道路连通性变化对全球生物多样性热点地区社会生态恢复力的影响，该地区是巴西，玻利维亚和秘鲁交界的亚马逊西南部三国MAP地区。 该项目将利用研究现场已有的大量数据，同时增加新的数据，以捕捉巴西方面最近基础设施升级后正在发生的变化。 调查人员将使用GPS和GIS在空间上整合国家数据和制图产品、地籍图、卫星图像、社会调查和植被横断面，从而将社会参与者、机构和生境斑块识别为地理空间中的系统组件。 调查人员还将通过当地的联系来具体说明这些组成部分之间的关系，从而可以监测这些网络随时间的变化，并促进对时间动态的空间分析，特别是对生计和福祉的反馈影响。 分析将是比较性的，因为巴西一侧的基础设施连通性高于其他地区，因此可以在同一地区进行自然实验。 研究人员将开发一个动态模拟模型，将利益相关者对未来可能出现的情景的输入纳入其中，以将模拟扩展到项目生命周期之外。该项目将改进跨学科环境研究的综合数据库的设计，促进复杂系统理论的实证评估，并为理解人类机构和环境变化提供更强大的框架。 它将建立在佛罗里达大学和阿克里联邦大学之间的机构协议的基础上，并为这两个机构的学生提供进行实地研究和参与数据分析和出版的机会。 由于亚马逊西南部三国MAP地区的当地利益相关者呼吁更多关于道路社会和生态影响的科学投入和数据产品，调查人员将向地区学校和大学社区以及决策者提供数据产品。 因此，该项目的结果应有助于更明智地规划新的基础设施，以获取经济利益，管理社会冲突，避免生态退化。 2005财政年度全国科学基金会人类和社会动态（HSD）竞赛的一个奖项支持了这个项目。 NSF的所有董事会和办公室都参与了HSD竞赛和HSD奖项组合的协调管理。

New roads bring complex changes to regions, including ecological degradation, social conflict, and economic development. "Road ecology" emerged to study transport systems and ecology, but more attention is needed on the role of humans as agents of environmental change, with a focus on livelihood decisions and resource use. People do not simply respond to new infrastructure. They also produce ecological and institutional changes that in turn generate feedback effects that affect human well being. In this interdisciplinary research project, the investigators will use a complex systems framework to focus on social-ecological systems as integrated wholes via the interface of infrastructure and land tenure institutions. They will draw on the concept of resilience, a property of complex systems, and reformulate it in terms of system components, relationships, innovations, and continuity, which afford a means of observing system properties relevant to the retention or loss of system identity. They also will expand on the concept of connectivity to consider its importance not only as infrastructure linkages that bring external shocks from outside regions but also as networks of connections among local actors and processes. These ideas motivate specific expectations about connectivity and resilience, both at the scale of a social-ecological system and for specific components within a system. The investigators will examine the impacts of road connectivity changes on social-ecological resilience in a global biodiversity hotspot, the tri-national MAP region of the southwestern Amazon where Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru meet. The project will draw on considerable data already in hand for the study site while adding new data to capture changes underway after recent infrastructure upgrades on the Brazilian side. The investigators will spatially integrate state data and cartographic products, cadastral maps, satellite imagery, social surveys, and vegetation transects using GPS and GIS, thereby allowing identification of social actors, institutions, and habitat patches as system components in geographic space. The investigators also will specify the relationships among those components via their local connections, which allow monitoring of changes in those networks over time and facilitate spatial analysis of temporal dynamics, particularly feedback effects to livelihoods and well being. The analysis will be comparative, because infrastructure connectivity is higher on the Brazilian side than the others, allowing for a natural experiment in the same region. The investigators will develop a dynamic simulation model, incorporating input from stakeholders about possible future scenarios to extend the simulations beyond the project life.This project will improve the design of integrated databases for interdisciplinary environmental research, facilitate empirical evaluation of complex systems theory, and result in more robust frameworks for understanding human agency and environmental change. It will build on an institutional agreement between the University of Florida and the Federal University of Acre and provide opportunities for students in both institutions to conduct field research and participate in data analysis and publications. Because local stakeholders in the tri-national MAP region of the southwestern Amazon have called for more scientific input and data products concerning social and ecological impacts of roads, the investigators will make data products available to regional schools and universities communities, and decision makers. Results from this project therefore should facilitate more informed planning about new infrastructure in order to capture economic benefits, manage social conflicts, and avoid ecological degradation. An award resulting from the FY 2005 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.