Modeling harvesting behavior to understand adaptation, mitigation, and transformation in northern subsistence systems

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)资助的。全球各地的人们越来越多地面临着他们赖以生存和食物的资源的快速变化。在北极，气候变暖是可能威胁土著社区生计的几种相互关联的变化力量之一。虽然北方土著人民在适应环境变化方面有很长的历史，但由于这些紧急情况，他们适应能力的限制可能会受到挑战。本项目将利用基于主体的建模(ABM)来阐明农村自给自足社区在不断变化的环境中所经历的决策过程。通过ABM，研究小组将调查文化适应与土著社区收获的生存资源之间的联系，这些社区发展了一种混合的、温饱-现金的经济。PIS与北坡和阿拉斯加内陆的两个当地社区合作，记录当前的环境变化如何影响自给自足的收获。当地知识和定量分析结合在一起，作为模拟自给收割机决策的基础，以便了解在生态、经济和社会变化条件下的适应情况。此外，研究人员希望确定随着社会生态条件的变化而出现的潜在权衡。将开发一个空间上明确的、侧重于多物种季节循环的ABM，并用于探索气候变化、燃料成本变化和土地利用变化这三个相互作用的变化驱动因素的影响，这些因素可能会影响收割机？选择和适应性策略。这项研究旨在探索作为复原力理论一部分的可操作性概念，并为这些系统的建模和提高我们对社会生态系统动力学的理解提供一种手段。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).People across the globe are increasingly facing rapid changes in the resources on which they depend for food and survival. In the Arctic, climate warming is one of several interrelated forces of change that could threaten the livelihoods of indigenous communities. While indigenous peoples of the north have a long history of adaptation to environmental change, the limits to their adaptive capacity may be challenged because of these emergent conditions. This project will utilize agent-based modeling (ABM)to elucidate the decision making process that rural subsistence based communities undergo in a changing environment. Through ABM the research team will investigate the linkages between cultural adaptations and the subsistence resources harvested by indigenous communities that have developed a mixed, subsistence-cash, economy. The PIs partner with two local communities of the North Slope and Interior Alaska to document how current environmental changes are affecting subsistence harvesting. Local knowledge and quantitative analysis are coupled together as the basis for modeling subsistence harvesters' decisions in order to understand adaptation in conditions of ecological, economic, and social change. In addition, the researchers hope to identify the potential tradeoffs that emerge with changing social-ecological conditions. A spatially explicit ABM that focuses on the multi-species seasonal round will be developed and used to explore the implications of three interacting drivers of change - climate change, changing fuel costs, and changes in land-use, which are likely to affect harvesters? choices and adaptive strategies. This research seeks to operational concepts espoused as part of resilience theory, and provide a means for modeling these systems and improving our understanding of the dynamics of social-ecological systems.