RII Track-4: Integrative Multimodal Strategies for Advancing Ecosystem Monitoring and Science Communication

河流提供的水对维持人类生命和生物多样性至关重要。随着全球人口和淡水需求的增加，人们正在寻找管理河流的方法，以满足社会和生态系统的需求。不同利益攸关方之间的沟通对于达成如何同时利用和保护淡水资源的解决方案是必要的。该项目旨在进一步传播河流科学，识别并与各种公众分享关于河流生态系统的观点，最终提高对这些复杂系统的理解，并在人们决定河流未来的过程中获得知识。奖学金活动将与新墨西哥大学（University of New Mexico）合作开展，在那里，PI和一名实习生级别的研究人员将调查过去和现在对用水决策的影响，并开发将延时摄像系统和录音机等数字技术与分享河流系统内部和河流系统之间联系的创造性方法相结合的方法。通过成为更好的传播者，项目参与者将准备好为公众和学生示范这些技术，并广泛提高公众对河流泛滥平原系统及其所支持的各种生命形式的理解。技术描述河流是相互联系的复杂系统，维持着包括人类在内的水生和陆地生物。随着人口的增长和淡水资源的有限，它们也处于生态、经济和社会争议的最前沿。跨学科方法将河流科学的研究、技术和公众素养结合起来，为利益相关者提供信息提供了潜力，使他们能够更好地应对在快速生态变化时期满足水资源社会和生态系统需求的挑战。该奖学金的目标是开发内容、方法和策略，以向公众传播科学，利用多模态数字技术以各种形式获取、分析和传递复杂的生态数据。这项工作将与新墨西哥大学合作进行，将包括向公众宣传的学习技巧；确定各流域变化的驱动因素；创建支持科学传播的内容，包括受管制和自由流动的河流的生态系统变化动态，以及水资源利用决策的历史和当前维度。奖学金活动将指导新的综合数字媒体传播战略的发展，这些战略可以在不同的受众之间共享和评估，以了解人们如何对各种形式的多模式内容做出反应并从中学习。研究成果将有助于建立一个理解和传达复杂河流科学的框架；提高公众对河流-漫滩系统生态系统联系的科学素养；并为人们提供与河流以及它们所维持的耦合的人类环境系统的更深层次的联系。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Nontechnical DescriptionRivers provide water that is essential for supporting human life and biodiversity. People are searching for ways to manage rivers to meet societal and ecosystem needs as human populations and demands for freshwater increase globally. Communication among diverse stakeholders is necessary for achieving solutions for how to simultaneously utilize and protect freshwater resources. This project aims to further communication of river science and to identify and share perspectives about river ecosystems with a variety of public audiences, ultimately improving understanding of these complex systems and access to knowledge as people decide the future of rivers. Fellowship activities will be conducted in collaboration with the University of New Mexico, where the PI and a trainee-level researcher will investigate historic and present influences on water-use decisions and develop approaches for combining digital technologies, like time-lapse camera systems and sound recorders, with creative ways of sharing information about connections within and across river systems. By becoming better communicators, project participants will be prepared to model these techniques for public audiences and students, as well as to broadly improve public understanding of river-floodplain systems and the various forms of life they support.Technical DescriptionRivers are interconnected, complex systems that sustain aquatic and terrestrial life, including humans. They are also at the forefront of ecological, economic, and social controversies as human populations increase and freshwater resources remain finite. Interdisciplinary approaches that bridge research, technology, and public literacy of river science offer potential to provide information to stakeholders so that they will be better equipped to address challenges about meeting societal and ecosystem needs for water resources during a time of rapid ecological change. The goal for this fellowship is to develop content, methodologies, and strategies to communicate science to public audiences, drawing upon multimodal digital technologies to obtain, analyze, and convey complex ecological data in a variety of forms. The work will be conducted in partnership with the University of New Mexico and will include learning techniques for reaching public audiences; characterizing drivers of change across river basins; and creating content to support science communication, featuring dynamics of ecosystem change on regulated and freely flowing rivers, as well as historic and present dimensions of water-use decisions. Fellowship activities will guide development of novel integrative digital media strategies for communication that can be shared and evaluated across diverse audiences to understand how people respond to and learn from various forms of multimodal content. Outcomes will help to establish a framework for understanding and conveying complex river science; increase public scientific literacy about ecosystem connections in river-floodplain systems; and provide people with a deeper connection to rivers and the coupled human-environmental systems they sustain.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.