Resilience and Vulnerability to Climate Change: A Collaboration between NABO and LTVTP

气候变化的脆弱性在地方、州、国家和全球范围内是一个紧迫的政策问题。公共和私人组织、政策制定者和资源管理者关心的是，处于这种规模的社区如何适应气候变化和日益不确定的未来。由于未来本质上是不可知的，政策是建立在狭隘的时间和空间窗口基础上的理解，管理“长期可持续性”是一项艰巨的任务。考古学对气候变化政策有很大的贡献，因为它研究了多个尺度上的社会和气候变化的长序列。本质上，人类-景观-气候相互作用的变化序列代表了有助于思考气候变化影响的结果的例子。这项提议要求资金启动一个研究合作网络，包括两个研究团队-北大西洋环线地区的北大西洋生物文化组织(NABO)和美国西南部和墨西哥北部干旱和半干旱沙漠的长期脆弱性和转型项目(LTVTP)。每个团队都调查了气候变化和社会变化之间的关系，在非常不同的环境下，跨越了许多世纪。这项拟议的工作将涉及1)僵化的社会制度如何影响对气候变化的调整，以及2)不频繁的气候变化(在人类记忆之外)是否比频繁变化的影响更大。两个小组要求提供资金，以支持启动一个研究协作网络，其中包括考古学家、建模人员、气候科学家以及来自NABO和LTVTP的可持续性专家，他们将以与考古学和当前政策相关的方式合成考古已知序列。这项研究将探讨社会应对气候变化的影响，这是当代政策的核心问题，与公共和私人组织、政策制定者和有兴趣促进应对气候变化的资源管理者有关。比较工作涉及来自世界不同地区的长序列，将扩大知识范围，超越短期和区域特有的范围。从长远来看，研究结果将综合韧性和脆弱性。这一综合将包括对僵化和路径依赖的社会过程的理解，这些社会过程影响人类对环境条件的影响和人类对气候变化的反应。拟议的项目是新的全球人类生态动力学联盟内的第一次合作。存档的数据将为一系列科学家提供长期的气候、社会和人口数据资源。研究合作将包括一系列的学生，为他们提供独特的、跨地区和跨学科的教育体验。

Vulnerability to climate change is a pressing policy issue at local, state, national, and global scales. Public and private organizations, policy makers, and resource managers are concerned with how communities at these scales can adjust to climate change and an increasingly uncertain future. With the future inherently unknowable and policies derived from understandings based on narrow windows of time and space, management for "long-term sustainability" is a daunting task. Archaeology has a strong contribution to make to climate-change policy because it investigates long sequences of social and climate change at multiple scales. In essence, the sequences of changes in human-landscape-climate interactions represent examples of outcomes that can help to think about the impacts of climate change.This proposal requests funds to initiate a Research Collaboration Network involving two research teams - the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) in the circumpolar North Atlantic region and Long-Term Vulnerability and Transformation Project (LTVTP) in the arid and semi-arid deserts of the southwestern US and northern Mexico. Each team investigates the relationship between climate change and social change in extremely different settings and over many centuries. This proposed work will address 1) how rigidity of social systems influences adjustments to climate change and 2) whether infrequent climate changes (outside of human memory) are more impactful than frequent changes. The teams request funding to support initiation of a Research Collaboration Network involving archaeologists, modelers, climate scientists, and experts on sustainability from NABO and LTVTP, who will synthesize archaeologically known sequences in ways that are relevant both to archaeology and current policy. This research will address the impacts of social responses to climate change, an issue central to contemporary policy and relevant to public and private organizations, policy makers, and resource managers interested in promoting resilience to climate change. The comparative work, engaging long sequences from contrasting regions of the world, will expand knowledge beyond the short-term and the regionally specific. Research results will synthesize resilience and vulnerability over the long term. This synthesis will include understanding of the social processes of rigidity and path dependence that affect human impacts on environmental conditions and human responses to climate change. The proposed project represents the first collaboration within the new Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance. The archived data will provide a permanent resource of long-term climate, social, and demographic data for a range of scientists. The research collaborations will include a range of students, offering them a unique, cross-regional and interdisciplinary educational experience.