CNH: The Emergence of Coupled Natural and Human Landscapes in the Western Mediterranean

地中海地区是世界上人类密集使用土地历史最悠久的地区之一。在一些地区，这导致了严重的环境退化；在其他地区，农场、牧场、城镇和自然区域的生产性景观已经保持了数千年。该项目将在西班牙和意大利的四个新石器时代遗址收集有关古代人类土地利用、植被和土地形态的考古数据。这些数据将指导社会和自然过程模型的发展，这些模型将试图预测其他土地利用模式的长期结果。这些预测将与几个世纪以来实际发生的情况的新知识相对照。在此基础上，将对模型进行改进，模拟土地覆盖和地形对人类决策的影响、土地利用和景观变化对植被的影响、土地覆盖和利用对地表和土壤的影响等反馈。通过提高我们从过去学习的能力，这个项目将帮助美国制定更可持续的农业和城镇发展计划。为了帮助传播结果，创建的建模软件将在网上提供。该项目广泛的教育组成部分包括对本科生和研究生的广泛培训，包括在科学领域代表性不足的群体成员，培训K-12教师使用景观变化模型的暑期项目，并将研究结果纳入四所大学的课程中。

The Mediterranean region has one of the longest histories of intensive human use of any part of the world. In some areas, this has led to severe environmental degradation; in other areas, productive landscapes of farms, pastures, towns, and natural areas have been maintained for thousands of years. This project will collect archeological data on ancient human land use, vegetation, and land form at four Neolithic sites in Spain and Italy. These data will guide the development of models of social and natural processes that will attempt to predict the long-term outcomes of alternative patterns of land use. The predictions will be checked against new knowledge of what has actually happened over centuries of use. Based on these checks, the models will be refined to simulate the feedbacks through which human decisions are affected by land cover and terrain, vegetation is affected by land use and landscape change, and the land surface and soils are affected by land cover and use.By increasing our ability to learn from the past, this project will help the U.S. plan for more sustainable agriculture and development of towns and cities. To help disseminate results, the modeling software created will be available on line. The extensive educational component of the project comprises extensive training of undergraduate and graduate students including members of groups under-represented in science, a summer program to train K-12 teachers to use models of landscape change, and the incorporation of findings into courses at four universities.