SPRF-IBSS: Linking complex social and ecological systems through integrative network modeling

社会、行为和经济科学局提供博士后研究奖学金，为新近毕业的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并在本科生和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家引导他们的研究努力跨越传统的学科界限，并利用独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外。这一博士后奖学金支持正在崛起的研究复杂的社会和生态系统的跨学科学者。人类依靠自然环境来支持一系列广泛的社会需求，如健康、繁荣和福利。然而，自然系统正面临前所未有的压力，迫切需要推进全球可持续性的战略。这一挑战与珊瑚礁尤其相关，珊瑚礁对于支持生物多样性和人类福祉至关重要，但在全球范围内仍在继续减少。为了应对这一挑战，这笔赠款支持SBE的一名博士后研究员评估沿海社区和渔业资源内部和之间的联系如何有助于成功(或不成功)管理珊瑚礁。结果揭示了有问题的权力动态，并就社区和从业人员应寻求建立的联系提出了建议，以改善生物多样性保护和社会福祉。该项目支持美国国家科学基金会S促进国民健康、繁荣和福利的使命，直接为美国和海外的珊瑚礁管理规划和实践提供信息，并将结果和见解传播给捕鱼界、从业者、海洋资源管理者和科学界。该项目还直接满足了美国国家科学基金会S的使命，即通过将社会科学和生态科学的理论和数据联系起来，并通过定义应用生态系统建模的前沿来促进科学进步。最后，这个项目通过为这位研究员提供宝贵的培训并为她在学术界的富有成效的职业生涯做好准备来促进教育和多样性。在学术界，女性在历史上一直被忽视。人(社会制度)和自然(生态系统)内部和之间的联系如何在社会生态系统中中介结果？社会和生态系统在多大程度上是相互依赖的，这可能会如何随着环境的变化而变化？为了回答这些问题，SBE研究员正在提出一个新的跨学科网络建模框架，以评估渔业社区和渔业资源内部和之间的社会-生态相互依存如何影响整个亚太珊瑚礁生态系统的成果，即生计惠益和可持续渔业。这项研究利用了多层次随机图建模的前沿进展，汇集了社会学、政治经济学、人文地理学和生态学的观点，以(1)确定关键的社会和生态相互依存关系，(2)了解社会行为者如何协调社会互动和与资源的关系，以及(3)为更有效的自然资源管理开发新的理论和培养实践指导。该项目提供了关于社会和生态系统如何相互关联、驱动社会生态结构形成的因素以及社会生态反馈如何与结果相关的重要经验见解，从而为发展适用于更广泛环境的理论提供了一个独特的机会。这项工作还促进了越来越多的跨学科研究，调查社会联系、权力不对称和社会生态协调在促进(或阻碍)环境治理理想结果方面的作用。最后，这项研究正在推进一种新的跨学科方法论框架，该框架可以在社会科学和生态科学的一系列背景下进行实证应用。

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising interdisciplinary scholar studying complex social and ecological systems. Humans rely on the natural environment to support to support a wide array of social needs, such as health, prosperity, and welfare. Yet natural systems are facing an unprecedented level of stress, and strategies to advance global sustainability are urgently needed. This challenge is particularly relevant for coral reefs, which are critical for supporting biodiversity and human well-being, yet continue to decline globally. In an effort toward meeting this challenge, this grant supports an SBE postdoctoral fellow in assessing how connections within and between coastal communities and fisheries resources contribute to successful (or unsuccessful) management of coral reefs. Results are uncovering problematic power dynamics, and providing recommendations on the connections that communities and practitioners should seek to build to improve biodiversity conservation and social well-being. Supporting NSF?s mission to advance national health, prosperity, and welfare, this project directly informs coral reef management planning and practice in the U.S and abroad, with results and insights being disseminated to fishing communities, practitioners, marine resource managers, and the scientific community. This project also directly addresses NSF?s mission to promote scientific progress by linking theory and data from the social and ecological sciences, and by defining frontiers in applied ecosystem modeling. Finally, this project advances education and diversity by providing the fellow with invaluable training and preparing her for a productive career in academia, where women have been historically underrepresented.How do connections within and between people (the social system) and nature (the ecological system) mediate outcomes in social-ecological systems? To what extent are social and ecological systems interdependent, and how might this vary with context? To answer these questions, the SBE fellow is advancing a novel interdisciplinary network modeling framework to assess how social-ecological interdependencies within and between fishing communities and fisheries resources mediate outcomes, i.e., livelihood benefits and sustainable fisheries, in coral reef ecosystems from across the Asia-Pacific. This research leverages cutting edge advances in multi-level random graph modeling and brings together perspectives from sociology, political economy, human geography, and ecology in order to (1) identify key social and ecological interdependencies, (2) understand how social actors mediate social interactions and relationships with resources, and (3) develop novel theory and cultivate practical guidance for more effective natural resource management. This project provides important empirical insight on how social and ecological systems are interlinked, the factors that drive the formation of social-ecological structures, and how social-ecological feedbacks relate to outcomes, thus presenting a unique opportunity for the development of theory applicable to a much wider range of settings. This work also contributes to a growing body of interdisciplinary research investigating the role of social connectivity, power asymmetries, and social-ecological alignment in facilitating (or impeding) desirable outcomes in environmental governance. Finally, this research is advancing a novel interdisciplinary methodological framework that can be applied empirically across a range of contexts in both the social and ecological sciences.