US-East Africa Workshop on Interdisciplinary Science for Integrated Assessment of Socioeconomic and Biophysical Processes in East Africa; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, February, 2006

理解人与环境之间复杂的相互作用对于可持续的环境、经济和农业管理至关重要。该奖项支持为美国、埃塞俄比亚、肯尼亚、坦桑尼亚和乌干达的科学家举办为期4天的研讨会，讨论如何整合来自社会科学和自然科学的数据，跨越不同的时间、空间和组织尺度。最近，人们强烈强调跨学科研究的必要性，但对如何进行跨学科研究的关注却很少。这个研讨会将允许一组具有跨学科研究经验的非洲和美国科学家分享和评价他们的经验。美国的参与者将包括科学家和学生，他们一直在东非从事由美国国家科学基金会的生物复杂性和环境倡议资助的两个项目。讲习班的目标是制定数据收集、分析和解释的建议做法，以便利用来自农场、田野和家庭的数据来预测景观、区域、国家和国际各级正在发生的情况。本次研讨会将包括来自美国和东非大学的研究生、博士后研究员和资深科学家等不同群体的参与者。除了探索如何进行跨学科研究和更好地理解贫困和环境退化之间的关系之外，我们期望这次研讨会将促进非洲和美国科学家之间以及东非内部的新合作。

Pell 0543004Understanding of the complex interactions between people and their environment is essential for sustainable environmental, economic and agricultural management. This award supports a 4-day workshop for American, Ethiopian, Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan scientists on how to integrate data from the social and natural sciences and across different temporal, spatial and organizational scales. Recently, there has been strong emphasis on the desirability of interdisciplinary research, but there has been less focus on how it should be done. This workshop will permit a group of African and U.S. scientists with experience doing interdisciplinary research to share and evaluate their experiences. The American participants will include scientists and students who have been working in East Africa on two projects funded by NSF's Biocomplexity and the Environment initiative. The workshop's goal is to develop recommended practices for data collection, analysis and interpretation that will permit use of data from the farm, field and household to predict what is happening at landscape, regional, national and international levels. This workshop will include a diverse group of participants including graduate students, post doctoral fellows and senior scientists from universities in the U.S. and East Africa. Beyond exploring how to conduct interdisciplinary research and getting better understanding of the relationships between poverty and environmental degradation, we expect that this workshop will foster new collaborations between African and American scientists and within East Africa itself.