SEES Fellows: Social-Ecological Resilience of Coastal Shoreline Ecosystems: Developing a Framework for Informed Decision-Making

这一跨学科项目将调查影响海岸复原力的社会、生态和工程因素，并制定一个改善沟通和知情决策的框架。这项研究的目的是了解沿海地区的社会、生态和工程目标如何与渔业和鱼类栖息地的健康相联系，以便制定一个框架，以提高社会和生态复原力。研究地点包括纳拉甘西特和莫比尔湾，这两个都是人口稠密的大型河口海湾，近岸海洋生物栖息地急剧下降。研究工作将1)确定生境组成变化的渔业后果并建立模型；2)调查影响海岸线生态系统可持续性的社会、文化和政治因素；3)评估消浪防波堤的海岸线保护能力和生境复杂性；4)将前三项任务产生的社会、生态和工程指数纳入决策框架。该项目将涉及学术、政府和私营部门的研究人员和从业人员之间的合作，并包括面向学生和公众的各种外展活动。了解与人类和自然社区复原力相关的因素的复杂性，对于那些在不断变化的星球上管理资源的人来说是高度优先的。在过去，大多数沿海保护规划和优先次序在没有充分了解或考虑社会文化或工程影响的情况下进行。这项研究的目标是为管理者提供决策支持工具，以实现最大限度地利用社会资本的恢复和可持续性努力。该项目由NSF科学、工程和教育促进可持续发展研究员(SEE FERLOS)计划支持，目标是帮助实现必要的发现，为导致环境、能源和社会可持续发展的行动提供信息，同时培养必要的劳动力来应对这些挑战。在SEES研究员的支持下，该项目将使有前途的早期职业研究人员能够在与可持续发展相关的独立研究生涯中站稳脚跟。

This interdisciplinary project will investigate the social, ecological and engineering factors that contribute to coastal resilience and develop a framework for improved communication and informed decision making. The study aims to understand how social, ecological and engineering objectives for coastal shorelines are interlinked with the health of fisheries and fish habitats in order to develop a framework to improve social and ecological resilience. Study sites include Narragansett and Mobile Bays, which are both large, densely-populated estuarine embayments that have experienced dramatic declines in nearshore marine habitats. The research effort will 1) identify and model the fisheries consequences of shifts in habitat composition; 2) investigate the social, cultural and political factors that affect the sustainability of shoreline ecosystems, 3) assess the shoreline protection capacity and habitat complexity of wave-attenuating breakwaters; and 4) incorporate the social, ecological and engineering indices generated by the first three tasks into a decision-making framework. The project will involve collaboration between researchers and practitioners in the academic, government and private sectors, and include a variety of outreach activities to students and the public.Understanding the complexity of factors related to resilience of human and natural communities is of high priority for those tasked with managing resources on a changing planet. In the past, most coastal conservation planning and prioritization has occurred without adequate knowledge or consideration of socio-cultural or engineering impacts. The goal of this research is to provide managers with decision support tools to enable restoration and sustainability efforts that maximize social capital. This project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. With SEES Fellows support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish themselves in an independent research career related to sustainability.