CNH-L: Visualizing Forest Futures Under Climate Uncertainty: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Decision-Support Tools for Collaborative Decision Making

这个跨学科的研究项目将研究人类的价值观和实践如何影响对自然系统的偏好，并影响森林资源和可持续性决策中的权衡。 该项目将侧重于两个首要主题：反馈在自然-人类系统中的重要性，以及仅凭知识系统无法充分体现的价值体系和习惯做法的重要性。 它将提供新的见解和信息，说明森林生态系统结构和功能的变化如何导致人类与森林物种和服务之间的新关系，以及森林管理做法如何影响生态系统。 该项目还将促进对价值观和做法之间复杂的相互关系的理解，包括土著人民的传统知识，以及个人和社区的决策。 此外，该项目还将增进对个人和社区在多大程度上持有文化、精神、道德和审美价值观，以及在多大程度上从事传统知识体系没有充分体现的森林习惯做法的了解。 由于该项目的参与者包括梅诺米尼民族学院，该项目将为美洲土著学生提供机会，使他们有机会在基础研究和使用创新技术方面接受教育和培训，包括虚拟现实软件和设备。 将为研究生和博士后学者提供进行跨学科科学方面的其他教育和培训机会。 该项目将促进该地区教育工作者、科学家和管理人员之间的合作，并将为目前侧重于土著人民和部落知识的环境评估活动提供信息。 该项目还将通过提供明确的途径，将价值观和与森林的关系纳入最先进的优化程序，它将协助森林管理人员和社区成员共同努力，评估贸易-来自土著文化的传统知识在环境评估中被认为是重要的，但在环境一级的规划中没有得到充分的体现。 由部落社区管理的森林正受到日益严重的虫害的威胁，虫害已经是北美地区面积最大的森林破坏，每年影响约2 000万公顷森林，估计费用为15亿美元。 森林的重大变化可能对许多部落社区所依赖的林业产生不利影响，并可能改变部落特征。 研究人员将使用关于未来森林状况的最先进的可视化和虚拟现实体验，以获得关于未来森林状况场景的更广泛的人类价值观。 这些结果将用于模拟森林管理活动中的偏好，并确定关于森林管理的经济和其他价值决定之间的权衡和协同作用。 研究人员将采用人类学，道德，基于过程和沉浸式的手段来探索影响人们和社区如何做出决策的复杂因素，并在面临相当大的不确定性时评估不同目标之间的权衡。 研究人员将测试一组假设，包括沉浸式虚拟现实可以增强对环境变化的情感和认知感知，以及通过将价值结构纳入强大的决策分析可以改进当前的管理活动。 价值观和实践将被纳入共识心理模型，这将通过沉浸式虚拟现实和生态系统建模提供信息，研究人员将增强决策支持算法，以评估结果的权衡。 沉浸式虚拟现实体验将包括交互式2D和3D景观地图，替代森林结构的360度全景，以及交互式地图。 决策分析方法将有助于对一系列广泛的可持续性指标进行权衡分析，并将有助于在不确定的未来条件下测试替代战略的绩效。 调查人员将描述和权衡和相互竞争的价值观之间的协同作用，反映文化，生态和经济福祉，并协助确定什么选择导致可持续的解决方案。 该项目由NSF耦合自然和人类系统动力学（CNH）计划支持。

This interdisciplinary research project will examine how human values and practices impact preferences about natural systems and influence the trade-offs made in decision making about forest resources and sustainability. The project will focus on two overarching themes: the importance of feedbacks in natural-human systems and the importance of value systems and customary practices that are not adequately captured by knowledge systems alone. It will provide new insights and information regarding how changes in forest ecosystem structure and function result in new relationships between humans and forest species and services as well as how forest-management practices influence ecosystems. The project also will advance understanding of the complex reciprocal relationships among values and practices, including traditional knowledge of indigenous people, and decision making by individuals and communities. Furthermore, the project will enhance understanding of the degree to which individuals and communities hold cultural, spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic values and engage in customary forests practices that are not adequately captured by conventional knowledge systems. Because the project's participants include the College of the Menominee Nation, the project will provide opportunities for Native American students to have education and training opportunities with respect to both basic research and to the use of innovative technologies, including virtual reality software and devices. Other education and training opportunities in the conduct of interdisciplinary science will be provided for graduate students and post-doctoral scholars. The project will promote collaborations among educators, scientists, and managers in the region and will inform ongoing environmental assessment activities focused on indigenous peoples and tribal knowledge. The project also will contribute to enhanced decision making for environmental change adaptation in tribal communities by providing clear routes by which values and relationships with forests can be embedded within state-of-the-art optimization procedures, and it will assist forest managers and community members in working together to evaluate trade-offs when making decisions.Traditional knowledge from indigenous cultures is recognized as important in environmental assessments but has not been adequately captured in landscape-level planning. Forests managed by tribal communities are under threat from increasing insect damage, which is already the most spatially extensive forest disturbance in North America, affecting approximately 20 million hectares of forest per year with an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. Significant changes to forests could adversely impact the forest industries upon which many tribal communities depend and could alter tribal identity. The investigators will use state-of-the-art visualization and virtual reality experiences about future forest conditions to access a broader range of human values about scenarios of future forest conditions. These outcomes will be used to model preferences in forest-management activities and determine trade-offs and synergies among economic and other value-based decisions about forest management. The investigators will employ anthropological, ethical, process-based, and immersive means to explore the complex factors that influence how people and communities make decisions and evaluate trade-offs among diverse objectives when faced with considerable uncertainty. The investigators will test a set of hypotheses, include the propositions that immersive virtual reality can enhance emotive and cognitive perceptions of environmental changes and that current management activities can be refined through the incorporation of value structures into a robust decision making analysis. Values and practices will be incorporated into consensus mental models, which will inform information available via immersive virtual reality and ecosystem modeling, and the investigators will enhance a decision support algorithm to assess trade-offs in outcomes. The immersive virtual reality experiences will include interactive 2-D and 3-D landscape maps, 360-degree depictions of alternative forest structures, and interactive maps through time. The decision-analytics approach will facilitate analysis of trade-offs across a broad set of sustainability metrics and will help test the performance of alternative strategies under uncertain future conditions. The investigators will characterize and tradeoffs and synergies among competing values that reflect cultural, ecological, and economic well-being and assist in determination of what choices lead to sustainable solutions. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.