SAVI: Climate Change, Human Adaptation and Risks to Sustainable Freshwater Ecosystems in the Western Hemisphere and Beyond

HarmonThis Science Across Virtual Institutes（SAVI）项目将通过研究气候驱动的淡水生态系统风险及其提供的服务，整合西半球的多种可持续性研究工作。 人们对气候变化与生态系统服务面临的威胁之间的联系知之甚少，也难以评估，因为这取决于区域气候对全球气候变化的反应。生态系统服务的价值因人类需求和文化背景的不同而在地方和区域各不相同。因此，评估（和减轻）这些对紧密耦合的自然-人类系统的威胁需要一种多学科的方法，涉及科学，社会经济和文化方面。 在这个项目中，来自美国的研究人员将与来自加拿大、阿根廷、哥伦比亚、智利、乌拉圭和未来全球参与国的补充研究人员合作。 该SAVI的目标是使所有这些研究人员能够扩大其地理和社会经济覆盖范围，以更好地评估气候和人为对淡水生态系统和服务的风险，并制定适应战略。 该项目将通过以下方式实现这一目标：（1）开发和实施标准化的环境网络基础设施（数据获取、管理和协作分析技术）在全球范围内利用淡水生态系统作为气候变化和服务风险的哨兵（特别是在中美洲和南美洲以前未观察到的环境中）;（2）调查流域和生态系统与多种压力源的相互作用，以评估地球物理，社会经济和文化梯度对生态系统服务的风险;（3）加强美国，加拿大和拉丁美洲国家制定可转让的战略，促进利益攸关方参与，以确定技术和经济上可行且文化上可接受的管理和缓解战略;以及（4）整合我们的研究生培训和随后的博士研究，以培养下一代国际化的，跨学科的水生生态系统研究人员，他们将解决对社会重要的科学挑战。人类受益于淡水生态系统提供的资源和过程，包括溪流，河流，湖泊和湿地。这项工作将研究这些被称为生态系统服务的惠益预计将如何随着气候变化而变化。 生态系统服务可分为四大类：供应（如饮用水或水电）、调节（如调节气候、控制疾病）、支持（如分配沉积物和营养物）和文化（如娱乐效益）。 该项目将联合工程师、地球科学家、生物学家和社会科学家，旨在了解气候变化对不同地方水生生态系统的影响速度和严重程度。 与此同时，调查人员将为人们确定适当的战略，通过调整当地或区域的做法来减少这些变化的影响。 生活在不同地方的人们对生态系统服务的价值有所不同。 例如，生活在大城市的人可能对饮用水或渔业质量的评价与生活在湖泊上的人不同。 该项目的一部分将侧重于确定不同文化和社会经济背景下成功的适应战略，并将这些战略传达给相关利害关系方。 最后，该项目将继续让本科生和研究生参与其研究和利益相关者外联活动，以便更好地为他们做好准备，以应对我们全球福祉面临的挑战。国际和综合活动办公室。

1336839HarmonThis Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) project will integrate multiple sustainability research efforts in the western hemisphere by examining climate-driven risks to freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide. The connection between climate variation and threats to ecosystem services is poorly understood and difficult to assess because it depends on regional climate responses to global climate change. The value of ecosystems services varies locally and regionally with varying human needs and cultural settings. Hence, assessing (and mitigating) these threats to tightly coupled natural-human system requires a multidisciplinary approach addressing scientific, socioeconomic and cultural aspects. In this project, researchers from the U.S. will team with complementary investigators from Canada, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, and future participating nations globally. The goal of this SAVI is to enable all these researchers to expand their geographical and socioeconomic coverage to better assess climate- and human-forced risks to freshwater ecosystems and services, and to develop adaptation strategies. The project will achieve this goal by (1) Developing and implementing a standardized environmental cyberinfrastructure (technology for data acquisition, management, and collaborative analysis) to employ freshwater ecosystems globally as sentinels of climate variability and risk to services (particularly in previously unobserved settings in Central and South America); (2) Investigating watershed and ecosystem interactions with multiple stressors to assess risks to ecosystem services across geophysical, socioeconomic, and cultural gradients; (3) Enhancing international collaboration between the U.S., Canada and Latin American nations in developing transferrable strategies for stakeholder engagement to determine management and mitigation strategies which are both technically and economically feasible, as well as culturally acceptable; and (4) Integrating our graduate student training and subsequent doctoral research to train the next generation of internationally engaged, inter-disciplinary aquatic ecosystems researchers who will attack scientific challenges of importance to society.Humans benefit from resources and processes supplied by freshwater ecosystems, including streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands. This work will study how these benefits, which are referred to as ecosystem services, are expected to change with changing climate. Ecosystem services can be grouped into four broad categories: provisioning (drinking water or hydropower for example), regulating (such as modulating climate, controlling disease), supporting (such as distributing sediments and nutrients), and cultural (such as recreational benefits). The project will unite engineers, earth scientists, biologists and social scientists in an effort aimed at understanding how quickly and how severely climate changes will affect aquatic ecosystems in different places. At the same time, the investigators will identify suitable strategies for people to reduce the impact of these changes by adapting practices locally or regionally. People living in different places value ecosystems services differently. For example, people living in a large city may value drinking water or the quality of a fishery differently than people living on a lake. Part of this project will focus on identifying successful adaptation strategies within different cultures and socioeconomic settings and communicating these strategies to relevant stakeholders. Lastly, the project will continuously involve undergraduate and graduate students in its research and stakeholder outreach activities in order to better prepare them to address the challenges ahead for our global well-being.This award is designated as a Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) award and is being co-funded by NSF?s Office of International and Integrative Activities.