CAREER: Citizens, Conservation, and Climate: Research and Education for Climate Literacy in Managed Landscapes

公共土地提供了重要的生态系统服务，如水资源的供应和调节、气候调节、文化和精神激励。气候变化影响了这些生态系统服务的可持续性，并且随着美国西部广泛的公共土地，对这些影响的管理响应是必要的。土地管理活动（如生火、放牧、选择性疏林）通过直接影响陆地植被的结构和组成以及间接改变水、能量和养分循环来影响生态系统服务。地表水分和能量平衡的变化引起了相应的区域水文气候变化。对这些反馈以及它们如何传播到像供水这样的生态系统服务的定量理解是缺乏的。该项目将提高对土地管理实践如何影响区域水文气候的基本认识，同时促进改进水文-人类耦合系统的建模。具体而言，现有模型将用于开发一个实验框架，明确模拟：(1)土地管理机构响应气候变化感知的自主行为，以及(2)区域气候和水文如何响应与这些管理活动相关的景观干扰。模型之间的信息交换将以管理活动导致景观植被组织结构变化的形式发生。这一建模框架将用于理解随着全球气候变化，管理活动和气候变化如何共同影响水文系统。该项目侧重于量化美国爱达荷州西南部一个大型供水盆地的降水、雪储量、土壤湿度和溪流流量等关键变量的变化。该项目还将提高爱达荷州k-12教育的气候知识。研究小组将制定一个试点计划，培训和装备教育工作者，使他们的学生参与小型自动化气象站的制造、使用和探索。将该项目与共同核心标准相结合，参与的k-12教师将通过参加培训项目并担任该项目的大使而获得专业发展学分。该项目将资助服务不足地区几名教师的旅费。这个项目将调查在气候变化的情况下，土地管理决策（例如森林减薄、规定的火灾）将如何改变公共土地的生态和水文健康。特别是，我们将确定与这些和其他管理活动相关的植被变化如何影响区域降水和供水。我们将通过连接模拟工具来实现这一目标，这些工具将人类活动和决策与物理过程结合起来，以创建未来的场景。这些情景将帮助土地管理者调整他们的做法以适应不断变化的气候，从而更好地保护水资源。该项目还将开发一个项目，帮助k-12教师对学生进行气候教育。该计划将提供培训和材料，使学生能够建立气象站来监测气候，并将这些观测结果带入课堂。总体而言，该项目将影响公共土地的保护，这些土地约占西部各州的50%，提供极其重要的自然资源，并促进气候知识的提高，提高我们适应气候变化的能力。

Public lands provide important ecosystem services such provisioning and regulation of water resources, climate regulation, and cultural and spiritual inspiration. Climate change impacts the sustainability of these ecosystem services and with the extensive public lands across the western U.S., a management response to these impacts is necessary. Land management activities (e.g., fire, grazing, selective tree thinning) influence ecosystem services by directly impacting the structure and composition of terrestrial vegetation and indirectly modifying water, energy, and nutrient cycling. Changes to surface moisture and energy balance induce corresponding changes in the regional hydroclimate. Quantitative understanding of these feedbacks and how they propagate to ecosystem services like the provisioning of water is lacking. This project will improve fundamental understanding of how land management practices influence regional hydroclimate while facilitating improved modeling of coupled hydroclimate-human systems. Specifically, existing models will be used to develop an experimental framework that explicitly simulates: (1) the autonomous behavior of land management agencies in response to perceptions of climate change, and (2) how regional climate and hydrology respond to landscape disturbance associated with these management activities. Information exchange between models will occur in the form of changes to the organization and structure of landscape vegetation as a result of management activities. This modeling framework will be used to understand how management activities and climate change jointly replumb the hydrologic system as the global climate changes. The project focuses on quantifying changes in key variables like precipitation, snow storage, soil moisture, and streamflow in a large water supply basin in southwest Idaho, USA. This project will also improve climate literacy in Idaho k-12 education. The research team will develop a pilot program to train and equip educators to engage their students in the fabrication, use, and exploration of miniaturized automated weather stations. Linking the program to Common Core standards, participating k-12 teachers will be conferred professional development credits by taking part in the training program and engaged as ambassadors for the program. Travel expenses for several teachers of underserved populations will be supported by the project.This project will investigate how land management decisions (e.g., forest thinning, prescribed fire) will modify the ecological and hydrological health of public lands in a changing climate. In particular, we will determine how changes in vegetation associated with these and other management activities impact regional precipitation and water supply. We will accomplish this by linking simulation tools that incorporate human activities and decision-making with physical processes to create scenarios of the future. These scenarios will help land managers adapt their practices to a changing climate to better protect water resources. This project will also develop a program to help k-12 teachers educate students about climate. This program will provide the training and materials to enable students to create meteorological stations to monitor climate and bring those observations into the classroom. Overall, this project will influence conservation of public lands, which comprise approximately 50% of western states and provide critically important natural resources, and promote improved climate literacy, increasing our capacity to adapt to a changing climate.