BCC: Collaborative Research: Designing SKOPE: Synthesized Knowledge of Past Environments

科学研究的一个重要重点是了解人类社会与它们所依赖的气候、物理和生物环境之间的复杂相互作用，而这些环境反过来又会产生影响。 当然，过去的环境往往与我们今天所经历的环境大不相同。此外，社会和环境变化的重要进程进展缓慢，有时要经过几十年或几百年才能看到。 为了研究近几十年来在短时期以外的任何时间内运作的社会和自然进程，必须掌握特定地点和时间的长期环境知识。不幸的是，关于过去环境的最先进的数据很难找到，甚至更难整合和解释。在Kintigh博士及其同事的指导下，该项目将开发一个在线工具SKOPE（过去环境综合知识）的计划，该工具将提供有关人类在给定地点和时间（过去或现在）所经历的环境的最新信息。它将利用明确的科学程序处理数据，以产生专门针对用户要求的最先进的环境信息综合。最初的开发计划是在美国西南部，但SKOPE的设计将很容易扩展到其他地方和时间。一旦实施，SKOPE将在互联网上免费提供。它将适用于可持续性，考古学，社会学，经济学，人类学和生态学以及资源管理和规划等领域。例如，它将直接有利于考古学家比较不同文明之间长期气候变化的社会后果，以及生态学家调查生物多样性的长期变化。Plantation可以利用其长期的环境重建来调查现有基础设施中的脆弱性，这些脆弱性超出了历史记录所提供的经验。学生和公众可以了解他们学习、居住或参观的地方的古代环境与当代环境的不同。SKOPE将访问现代和历史观测数据的在线数据库（例如，关于降雨量、温度和动植物分布的数据）以及过去环境指标的数据库（例如，根据树木年轮宽度重建的降雨量，以及在过时的考古遗址中发现的植物遗骸和动物骨骼）。解释不同类别数据的科学专家将制定程序，将这些不同的环境观测和指标转化为有关时间和地点的详尽记录的环境科学综合报告。 SKOPE的设计将以潜在用户在与学术界、公共部门和私营部门专业人员举行的会议上提出的需求为指导。该项目将确定关于当前和过去环境的数据的主要来源，并将推广实现有用的综合所需的分析程序。随后的开发可将该工具扩展到更多的地区和时间，并纳入更多类别的环境数据。

An important focus of scientific research is understanding the complex interactions between human societies and the climatic, physical, and biological environments on which they depend, and which they, in turn, influence. Past environments, of course, were often quite different from those we experience today. Furthermore, important processes of social and environmental change operate slowly and are sometimes visible only when viewed over decades or centuries. In order to study social and natural processes operating over anything other than short periods in recent decades, long-term environmental knowledge specific to particular locations and times is essential. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art data on past environments are difficult to find and even more difficult to integrate and interpret. Under the direction of Dr. Kintigh and his colleagues, the project will develop plans for an online tool, SKOPE (Synthesized Knowledge of Past Environments), that will provide state-of-the-art information about the environment experienced by humans at a given a place and time, past or present. Using explicit scientific procedures, it will process the data to yield a cutting-edge synthesis of environmental information specifically tailored to the user's request. Initial development is planned for the Southwest US, but SKOPE's design will be designed to be easily extended to other places and times. Once implemented, SKOPE will be freely accessible on the Internet. It will be applicable in such fields as sustainability, archaeology, sociology, economics, anthropology, and ecology as well as for resource management and planning. For example, it will directly benefit archaeologists comparing the social consequences of long-term climate change across different civilizations and ecologists investigating long-term changes in biodiversity. Planners could use its long-term environmental reconstructions to investigate vulnerabilities in existing infrastructure that are outside the experience provided by the historic record. Students and members of the general public could learn how ancient environments differed from contemporary ones in places they study, inhabit, or visit. SKOPE will access online databases of modern and historic observational data (for example, on rainfall, temperature, and plant and animal distributions) as well as databases of indicators for past environments (for example, rainfall reconstructed from tree-ring widths, and plant remains and animal bones found in dated archaeological sites). Scientific experts in the interpretation of different classes of data will develop procedures that transform these diverse environmental observations and indicators into a thoroughly documented scientific synthesis of the environment for the time and place of interest. The design of SKOPE will be guided by the needs stated by potential users in meetings with academic, public-, and private-sector professionals. The project will identify key sources of data on current and past environments and will generalize the analytical procedures required to achieve useful synthesis. Subsequent development could extend the tool to additional areas and times and incorporate more classes of environmental data.