Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Understanding Coupled Biological and Cultural Resilience across Coastal Pacific Island Systems

全球的沿海系统正在迅速变化，导致人类社会需要适应。考虑到环境变化、人口增长和气候影响，预测表明，到2030年，自给性农业和沿海渔业将无法满足许多太平洋国家的粮食需求。西太平洋的所罗门群岛具有独特的文化、农业和生物多样性，可以成为系统如何适应经常性变化的典范。尽管所罗门群岛社区在有效应对重大的不可预测的环境和社会变化方面有着悠久的历史，但在许多地区，关闭珊瑚礁或限制渔业等传统战略现在因应诸如新兴海洋资源市场等外部力量而步履蹒跚，而这些海洋资源以前没有被当地人开发。该项目将研究气候变化和不断增加的人口规模等压力之间的关系，相互关联的人-自然系统的健康，以及从这些系统中获得的好处，如粮食安全、清洁水和生物多样性，以便更好地为有效管理人员以及支持他们的土地和海景提供信息。该项目将为过去十年与主要调查人员合作开发的社区驱动的保护网络的未来情景和资源管理规划提供信息。该项目还将有助于提出建议，将复原力思维纳入太平洋和全球适应气候变化、减少灾害风险和自然资源管理的政策制定。研究人员还将以创新的方式评估和扩大谁参与了研究和管理进程，部分方法是探索接受和使用当地知识和文化认同的技术。该项目将提高社会和生物科学家以及决策者在地方一级管理社区景观以实现可持续性的能力。其他更广泛的影响包括培训来自美国的博士后研究人员和硕士学生以及来自所罗门群岛的本科生。该项目作为国家科学基金会海岸科学、工程和可持续发展教育计划-海岸SEES的一部分得到支持。在太平洋岛屿的人类和自然社区中，最近的社会和生态压力可能正在改变“生物文化”状态，由社会、生态和进化过程中耦合和相互交织的反馈集定义，这些过程塑造了陆地和海景马赛克、社区和资源价值。由于人口、市场和气候变化带来的潜在压力，资源使用可能正在发生变化。使用生物文化这一术语强调，不能仅从社会或生物学的角度来完全理解资源管理。该项目将揭示不断变化的压力、生物文化状态和社会生态效益之间的关系。研究人员将使用压力-状态-效益-响应框架来描述和告知所罗门群岛社区从礁到脊的管理，对生物文化状态和潜在的系统对持续或未来冲击的复原力进行多元分析。该项目将：1)根据当地生态知识、生物文化连通性和治理的指标，评估当代景观镶嵌变化对生物文化状况的影响；2)评估当前生物文化状况与福祉之间的关系，包括人类(以粮食安全和获得充足淡水资源衡量)和生态状况(以生态系统规模的生物多样性价值衡量)之间的关系。研究人员将分析景观变化、生物文化状态和福祉之间的关系，为未来的情景规划提供信息。研究人员将对未来的变化进行建模，重点放在气候变化、市场力量和资源使用情景的影响上，以了解给定生物文化状态的组成部分如何培养弹性潜力。与参与性情景规划相结合，共同创建具有文化相关性的生物文化状况经验指标，将成为有效整合西方科学知识和地方知识的典范。该项目通过以空间明确、透明和动态的方式整合文化、经济和生态方面的考虑，代表着更广泛的场景规划社区的关键进步。

Coastal systems are changing rapidly across the globe, resulting in the need for human societies to adapt. Given the combination of environmental changes, population growth, and climate impacts, projections suggest that subsistence agriculture and coastal fisheries will fail to support the food needs of many Pacific countries by 2030. The Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific, with their unique cultural, agricultural, and biological diversity could constitute models for how systems adapt to recurrent change. Although Solomon Island communities have a long history of effectively addressing major unpredictable environmental and social changes, traditional strategies such as reef closures or fisheries restrictions are now faltering in many areas in response to outside forces such as emerging markets for marine resources that were previously unexploited by local people. This project will study the relationship among pressures such as climate change and increasing human population size, the health of inter-related human-natural systems, and benefits derived from these systems such as food security, clean water, and biodiversity in order to better inform effective management of people and the land and seascapes that support them. The project will inform future scenarios and resource management planning across a community-driven conservation network developed over the last decade in partnership with the principle investigators. This project will also contribute to recommendations for incorporating resilience thinking into policy development for climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and natural resource management in the Pacific and globally. The researchers will also engage in innovative ways to evaluate and broaden who is participating in the research and management process, in part by exploring technologies that embrace and use local knowledge and cultural identity. The project will improve the ability of social and biological scientists and of decision makers to manage community landscapes for sustainability at local levels. Additional broader impacts include training postdoctoral researchers and master's students from the United States and undergraduates from the Solomon Islands. This project is supported as part of the National Science Foundation's Coastal Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability program - Coastal SEES.Across Pacific Island human and natural communities, recent social and ecological pressures may be changing "biocultural" states, defined by coupled and interwoven sets of feedbacks among social, ecological, and evolutionary processes that shape land- and seascape mosaics, communities, and resource values. Resource use may be shifting due to underlying pressures from demographic, market, and climate changes. Use of the term biocultural emphasizes that resource management cannot be fully understood from social or biological standpoints alone. This project will uncover relationships among changing pressures, biocultural states, and socio-ecological benefits. Researchers will use a pressure-state-benefit-response framework to describe and inform reef-to-ridge management across Solomon Island communities in a multivariate analysis of biocultural state and potential system resilience to ongoing or future shocks. This project will: 1) evaluate the impact of contemporary landscape mosaic transformation on biocultural state, as defined by indicators of local ecological knowledge, biocultural connectivity, and governance; and 2) assess relationships between the current biocultural state and the state of well-being, both human (as measured by food security and access to sufficient freshwater resources) and ecological (as measured by biodiversity values at the ecosystem scale). Researchers will analytically relate landscape transformation, biocultural state and well-being benefits to inform future scenario planning. Researchers will model future shifts with an emphasis on the influence of climate change, market forces, and resource use scenarios to understand how components of a given biocultural state foster resilience potential. The co-creation of empirical, culturally relevant indicators of biocultural state, combined with participatory scenario planning, will serve as a model for effective integration across western scientific and local knowledge. This project represents a key advance for the broader scenario planning community by integrating cultural, economic and ecological considerations in a spatially explicit, transparent, and dynamic manner.