CNH: Impacts of Global Change Scenarios on Ecosystem Services from the World's Rivers

水是地球系统的重要组成部分，对人类繁荣至关重要。与此同时，人类正在迅速地将自己嵌入水循环的基本特征中，而不完全知道后果。水系变化的主要来源包括管理不善和过度使用、河流流量扭曲、污染、流域干扰、入侵物种和温室效应。确定这种变化的集体意义对地球和社会科学来说都是一项重大挑战。该项目将促进目前对人类控制、降低或加强与水有关的生态系统服务，进而影响全球经济体系和水生生物多样性的方式的理解。这些目标将通过对人-水相互作用的综合跨学科研究来实现，该研究包括建模、数据集成和评估工具，以及跨水资源管理、生物学和环境经济学角度的综合。模型预测将被用来将最近的趋势延伸到未来，并评估替代管理战略在多大程度上能够在100年的时间范围内带来更可持续的未来。形成现代河流系统的许多力量的跨学科方面为合作提供了丰富的智力环境，通过该项目的跨学科方法获得的经验教训是这项工作的重要副产品。鉴于水在我们的环境和人类福祉中的核心作用，该项目的结果将对管理淡水资源的努力立即产生价值。除了科学价值外，综合了解河流系统的状况--为人类提供服务的最大可再生水供应--对于公共政策部门具有战略重要性，因为人们日益感到水是一个国际安全问题。这种综合的好处将为全球社会和环境管理挑战提供信息：应对极端气候；保护生态系统服务和生物多样性；粮食和能源安全；经济竞争力；以及保护人类健康。该项目将以与政策相关的科学为目标，教育下一代学生进行战略资源评估，并向公民宣传未来的主要环境挑战和解决方案，从而产生持久的好处。

Water is an essential building block of the Earth system and critical to human prosperity. At the same time, humans are rapidly embedding themselves into the basic character of the water cycle without full knowledge of the consequences. Major sources of water system change include mismanagement and overuse, river flow distortion, pollution, watershed disturbance, invasive species, and greenhouse warming. Defining the collective significance of such change constitutes a major challenge for the Earth and social sciences alike. This project will advance current understanding of the ways in which humans control, degrade or enhance water-related ecosystem services, and in turn impact the global economic system and aquatic biodiversity. These goals will be addressed through an integrated, interdisciplinary study of human-water interactions that includes modeling, data integration, and assessment tools as well as synthesis across water resource management, biology, and environmental economics perspectives. Model projections will be used to extend recent trends into the future, and assess the degree to which alternative management strategies can lead to more sustainable futures over a 100-year time horizon. The interdisciplinary aspects of the many forces shaping modern river systems provide a rich intellectual environment for collaboration, and lessons learned through this project's cross-disciplinary approaches constitute an important byproduct of the work.Given the central role of water in our environment and human well-being, results from this project will have immediate value to efforts to manage freshwater resources. Beyond its scientific value, a synthetic understanding of the state of the rivers systems--the single largest renewable water supply serving humankind--is of strategic importance to the public policy sector, given a growing sense of urgency regarding water as an international security issue. The benefits of such synthesis will inform global social and environmental management challenges: coping with climate extremes; preserving ecosystem services and biodiversity; food and energy security; economic competitiveness; and, protecting human health. This project will have lasting benefits by targeting policy-relevant science, educating the next generation of students in strategic resource assessment, and informing the citizenry about major environmental challenges and solutions for the future.