IBSS: Towards an Integrated Understanding of Natural Resource Use and Management

这一跨学科研究项目将考察不同人类社会管理自然资源的方式的差异。长期以来，科学家们一直在争论环境、人口、制度、社会和历史因素如何影响不同社会使用的自然资源管理战略，以及为什么这些战略会随着时间的推移而变化。多样化的自然资源管理方法使人类得以居住在地球上的每一块大陆上，包括沙漠、热带雨林、稀树草原、冻土带、山脉和平原等不同的环境。社会可持续利用和管理资源的程度是当前和未来福祉的主要决定因素。该项目将对关于土地保有权和生存战略的地理和演变的长期辩论中的关键问题的可能答案进行全球范围的经验测试。研究人员将展示生物地理学和进化生物学中开发的方法在解决来自多个学科的有关自然资源管理中全球地理格局驱动因素的理论问题时的效用。项目结果将为政策制定者和其他人提供关于不同背景为更可持续的规划提供的限制和机会的重要见解。该项目将展示由调查人员开发的全球、可供公众查阅的跨学科数据库的效用，以促进对文化多样性和资源管理和利用的其他方面的研究。该项目还将为本科生和研究生提供宝贵的跨学科教育和培训机会，为博士后研究人员提供机会。研究人员将解决三个关键问题：(1)不同因素在多大程度上决定了全球不同地区的生存战略和土地保有制？(2)是否存在可预测的变化模式，或者任何形式的生存或土地保有制是否会随着时间的推移而转变为其他形式？(3)生存战略和土地保有制是否共同演变？由于先前分析方法的局限性，对这些问题的审议一直很困难。研究人员展示了最初在生物地理学和进化生物学中开发的方法的实用性，以探索推动文化多样性进化的因素和地理模式，他们还组装了一个数据库，将大约1400多个社会的100多个文化特征映射到语言谱系树上。他们将把这些数据与生态和环境变量的数据联系起来，以便对文化变化的驱动因素和文化多样性的模式进行新的调查。该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究(IBSS)竞赛得到支持。

This interdisciplinary research project will examine variations in the ways that different human societies have managed natural resources. Scientists long have debated how environmental, demographic, institutional, social, and historical factors shape the natural resource management strategies used by different societies and why these strategies change over time. Diverse natural resource management approaches have allowed humans to inhabit every continent on earth, including such varied settings as deserts, rainforests, savannas, tundra, mountains, and plains. The degree to which society can use and manage resources sustainably is a primary determinant of current and future well-being. This project will provide global-scale empirical tests of possible answers to critical questions in long-standing debates regarding the geography and evolution of land tenure and subsistence strategies. The investigators will demonstrate the utility of approaches developed in biogeography and evolutionary biology for addressing theoretical issues from multiple disciplines regarding drivers of global geographic patterns in natural resource management. Project findings will provide policy makers and others with critical insights about the constraints and opportunities different contexts offer for more sustainable planning. The project will demonstrate the utility of a global, publicly accessible, interdisciplinary database developed by the investigators to facilitate studies of cultural diversity and other dimensions of resource management and use. The project also will valuable interdisciplinary education and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students for for post-doctoral researchers.The investigators will address three critical questions: (1) To what degree do different factors determine subsistence strategies and land tenure systems across different regions of the globe? (2) Do predictable patterns of change exist, or can any form of subsistence or land tenure turn into any other form over time? (3) Do subsistence strategies and land-tenure systems co-evolve? Consideration of these questions has been difficult due to the limitations of prior analytical approaches. The investigators have demonstrated the utility of methods originally developed in biogeography and evolutionary biology to explore the factors that drive the evolution and geographic patterns of cultural diversity, and they have assembled a database that maps more than 100 cultural features onto language family trees for over about 1,400 societies. They will link these data with data on ecological and environmental variables in order to conduct new inquiries into the drivers of cultural change and patterns of cultural diversity. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.