CNH-Ex: Quantifying Linkages Among Land-Use Policies, Agricultural Intensification, Habitat Fragmentation, and Social-Ecological Resilience in a Tropical Biological Corridor

该项目旨在了解热带景观中土地使用政策、农业农村发展和土地使用变化之间的相互作用，以及这些变化如何影响这些景观中人类和自然生态系统的恢复力和关系。数百万公顷的热带森林已转为农业用地，留下了零星的天然森林残留在农业基质中。从历史上看，这种农业基质主要是自给作物和牧场，但在某些地区，这种土地正在迅速被大豆、香蕉和菠萝生产的集约化种植园农业所取代。与更传统的土地使用相比，这些作物需要更高的劳动力、资金、农用化学品和基础设施投入。这种新的土地转换趋势的影响尚不清楚，但初步研究表明，集约种植园农业可能会推动当地社区的人口和经济发生巨大变化，并对生态系统产生深远影响。最终，这些影响将改变这些人类和生态社区保持对未来变化的适应能力。因此，需要更好地了解土地使用政策、生态系统结构和功能以及当地社区和土地管理者的决定和行动之间的关系，因为这些决定和行动最终决定了集约种植园农业将在何处以及以多快的速度推广。本项目将在哥斯达黎加圣胡安-拉塞尔瓦生物走廊模型系统中评价这些关系。具体而言，这项研究将解决各种研究问题，如：什么国家政策导致建立和密集的非传统种植园作物的传播？三个重点区域的社会和生态复原力指标状况如何？当前和替代政策情景将如何影响未来的土地利用模式，以及这些将如何影响生态恢复力？预测土地利用变化的未来情景建模如何影响社区成员和土地管理者对未来社会和生态恢复力的看法？这项工作在研究的每一步都纳入了利益攸关方的投入;实施了两种新的生态方法，功能性状分析和景观遗传学;并明确衡量同一系统中多个时空尺度上的社会和生态恢复力。这项研究的结果将促进对人类社区和生态系统如何应对农业集约化的理解，因此，它将帮助科学家和管理人员更好地了解如何在面对全球变化时管理复原力。在地方范围内，将通过利益相关者研讨会与社区领袖和区域土地管理者分享调查结果;这些研讨会将为参与者提供信息，以做出明智的土地利用决策，并发展社区适应变化的能力。在全球范围内，这项研究的结果将通过在参与大学、专业会议上的介绍以及通过在科学期刊上发表同行评审的论文来传播。 此外，该项目将有助于多名本科生和五名博士的跨学科研究培训。学生，都来自代表性不足的群体。该项目由NSF耦合自然和人类系统动力学（CNH）计划支持。

This project is about understanding the interactions between land-use policies, agricultural rural development and land use change in tropical landscapes, and how these changes affect the resilience of and relationships between human populations and the natural ecosystems present in these landscapes. Millions of hectares of tropical forests have been converted to agriculture leaving behind patches of remnant natural forest embedded in an agricultural matrix. Historically, this agricultural matrix was dominated by subsistence crops and pasture, but in some areas this land is rapidly being replaced with intensive plantation agriculture for soybean, banana, and pineapple production. In contrast with more traditional land uses, these crops require higher inputs of labor, money, agrochemicals, and infrastructure. The impacts of this new land conversion trend are not well understood, but preliminary studies suggest that intensive plantation agriculture may drive dramatic demographic and economic changes in local communities and have profound effects on ecological systems. Ultimately, these impacts will change the ability of these human and ecological communities to maintain resilience to future change. Thus, a better understanding is needed of the relationships among land-use policies, ecosystem structure and function, and the decisions and actions of local communities and land managers that ultimately determine where and how fast intensive plantation agriculture will spread. This project will evaluate these relationships in the model system of the San Juan-La Selva Biological Corridor in Costa Rica. Specifically, this research will address a variety of research questions, such as: What national policies led to the establishment and spread of intensive non-traditional plantation crops? For three focal regions, what is the status of the social and ecological indicators of resilience? How will current and alternative policy scenarios affect future land use patterns, and how will these affect ecological resilience? How does future scenario modeling of projected land use changes influence the perceptions of community members and land managers about their future social and ecological resilience? This effort incorporates stakeholder input at every step of the research; implements two new ecological approaches, functional traits analysis and landscape genetics; and explicitly measures both social and ecological resilience in the same system and at multiple spatial and temporal scales.Findings from this research will advance understanding of how human communities and ecosystems respond to agricultural intensification, and will therefore help scientists and managers better understand how to manage for resilience in the face of global change. At the local scale, findings will be shared through stakeholder workshops with community leaders and regional land managers; these workshops will provide participants with information to make informed land use decisions, and develop community capacity to adapt to change. At the global scale, findings from this research will be disseminated through presentations at the participating universities, at professional conferences, and through publication of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals. In addition, this project will contribute to the interdisciplinary research training of multiple undergraduates and five Ph.D. students, all from under-represented groups. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.