Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Scenarios of freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services in a changing Arctic

需要对社会经济和全球环境趋势对生物多样性和生态系统服务的复杂相互作用进行创新研究，以帮助开发更多信息丰富的情景，以应对环境和人类发展挑战。为了克服这些挑战，需要结合自然-人类系统的方法和分析。这些方案提供了生物多样性和生态系统服务的改进情景，将土地利用、入侵物种、过度开发、生物多样性、环境变化和污染等直接和间接驱动因素的产出结合起来。由此产生的模型提供了一种最先进的方法，可以实现更准确的定量评估、更好的土地利用和更有效的生态系统服务。采用这种方法，该研究项目是美国科学家和其他四个拥有北极领土的国家的科学家之间的国际联盟，旨在评估极地周围北极地区的淡水生物多样性和食物网动态及其对人类，社区和该地区的价值。对于这个项目，每个国家都提供资金来支持他们自己的研究人员和他们的研究部分。该项目描述了北极沿纬度梯度（从北向南）生物多样性的现状，并利用实验和计算机模型开发应对气候变暖的变化情景，因为北极变暖可能导致各种物理环境变化，如永久冻土融化，这可能导致水质、水温、食物网和鱼类分布的变化。可能导致的粮食资源变化可能对极北地区的人口产生重大影响（例如，生计活动、商业和休闲渔业等）。通过实地研究、实验、建模和预测，该项目开发了气候变化、淡水生物多样性和北极淡水生态系统服务后果之间的联系，所有这些都具有潜在的社会经济影响。尽管存在大量关于北极淡水渔业经济学的文献，但栖息地条件与人类和气候引起的北极湖泊和河流生产力变化的社会经济后果之间的相互作用却鲜为人知。这项研究填补了这一空白。这项研究的更广泛影响包括美国与丹麦/格陵兰、挪威、瑞典和加拿大科学家之间的国际合作。它们还包括确定生物多样性的变化，以帮助各国认识到北极与气候变化有关的生态影响的早期预警信号；评估北极生物多样性变化的经济影响，这对管理区域资源和/或制定基于科学的政策和法规至关重要；实现采样方法、数据存储和大规模分析的环极统一，以促进未来的环极生物多样性变化评估；提高我们对北极地区土著人和其他依赖淡水渔业的人的粮食安全的认识和理解。该项目还支持EPSCoR州（即阿拉斯加）的一所机构中科学领域代表性不足的性别代表的PI，从而扩大代表性不足群体的参与。该奖项支持参与由来自23个国家的26个资助机构组成的联盟通过贝尔蒙特论坛征集“生物多样性和生态系统服务情景”提案竞争性选择的项目的美国研究人员。该呼吁是一项多边倡议，旨在支持有助于开发情景、模型和决策支持工具的研究项目，以了解和解决我们星球面临的关键问题。竞赛的目标是改进和应用参与式情景方法，以提高研究的相关性和接受度，并解决影响驱动因素和政策干预建模方法方面的差距。它还开发和交流与模型相关的不确定性水平，以改善数据可访问性并填补知识空白。利用这种方法，该资助项目将解决北极湖泊和河流生物多样性与生态系统服务之间联系的知识空白。所采取的方法包括使用物理/化学气候变化模型来开发包含多种营养水平的生物多样性变化情景，并预测生物多样性情景对生态系统服务的影响。具体研究目标包括：(1)评价与环境驱动因素相关的生物多样性和功能性状模式，识别跨纬度梯度的北极淡水生态系统（湖泊和河流）生物多样性热点；(2)了解与气候变化相关的直接和间接驱动因素如何影响北极水生食物网的生物多样性和性状组成，并最终影响鱼类生产；(3)通过经验观测和实验模拟量化北极淡水生物多样性情景的不确定性；(4)评估养分富集和陆地土地变化对北美和欧洲跨纬度梯度群落结构和功能措施的影响。其他方法包括使用生物经济模型来评估与气候变化、养分富集和资源开发相关的北极湖泊和河流生态系统服务的社会经济权衡和潜在变化；制定评估标准，更好地量化北极湖泊和溪流的生态变化，为早期发现新物种和/或入侵物种提供战略，并可为生物多样性情景的发展提供依据；并提供信息和研究结果，以便更好地告知资源管理者、监管机构和政策制定者，以及生活在北极的人们和关注北极淡水生态系统持续变化的全球社会。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。

Innovative research on the complex interaction of socio-economic and global environmental trends on biodiversity and ecosystem services is needed to help develop more informative scenarios for addressing environmental and human development challenges. To overcome these challenges coupled natural-human systems approaches and analyses are needed. These provide improved scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services that couple the outputs of direct and indirect drivers such as land use, invasive species, overexploitation, biodiversity, environmental change, and pollution. The resulting models provide a methodological state-of-the art that results in more accurate quantitative assessments, better land use, and more effective ecosystem services. Employing this methodology, this research project, which is an international coalition between US scientists and those from four other nations with Arctic territories, seeks to evaluate freshwater biodiversity and food web dynamics in the circumpolar Arctic region and their value for people, communities, and the region. For this project, each country provides funds to support their own investigators and their part of the research. This project characterizes the current state of biodiversity along latitudinal gradients (north to south) in the Arctic and uses experiments and computer models to develop change scenarios in response to climate warming because Arctic warming can cause various physical environmental changes, such as permafrost thaw, which can result in changes in water quality, water temperature, food webs, and fish distributions. Shifts in food resources that might result could have large impacts on far north human populations (e.g., subsistence activities, commercial and recreational fisheries, etc.). Through field studies, experiments, modeling, and forecasting, this project develops linkages between climate change, freshwater biodiversity, and consequences for ecosystem services in Arctic freshwaters, all of which have potential socio-economic impacts. Although a large body of literature exists on Arctic freshwater fishery economics, interactions between habitat conditions and the socio-economic consequences of human- and climate-induced changes in the productivity of Arctic lakes and rivers are poorly known. This study fills that gap. Broader impacts of the research include international collaboration between scientists in the US and Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Sweden, and Canada. They also include identifying shifts in biodiversity to assist countries in recognizing early warning signs of climate change-related ecological impacts in the Arctic; assessing economic implications for changes in Arctic biodiversity, something critical to managing regional resources and/or developing science-based policies and regulations; enabling circumpolar harmonization of sampling methods, data storage, and large-scale analysis to promote future circumpolar assessments of biodiversity change; and improving our knowledge and understanding of Arctic food security for native peoples and others in the region who depend on freshwater fisheries. The project also supports a PI from a gender underrepresented in the sciences at an institution in an EPSCoR state (i.e., Alaska), thereby broadening participation of underrepresented groups.This award supports US researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a coalition of 26 funding agencies from 23 countries through the Belmont Forum call for proposals on "Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services". The call was a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that contribute to the development of scenarios, models, and decision-support tools for understanding and solving critical issues facing our planet. The goal of the competition was to improve and apply participatory scenario methods to enhance research relevance and its acceptance and to address gaps in methods for modelling impact drivers and policy interventions. It was also to develop and communicate levels of uncertainty associated with the models, to improve data accessibility and fill gaps in knowledge. Using this methodology, the funded project will address knowledge gaps on the links between biodiversity and ecosystem services in Arctic lakes and rivers. The approach undertaken includes using physical/chemical climate change models to develop biodiversity change scenarios which incorporate multiple trophic levels and predict consequences of biodiversity scenarios to ecosystem services. Specific research objectives include: (1) evaluation of biodiversity and functional trait patterns in relation to environmental drivers and identify biodiversity hotspots in freshwater ecosystems (lakes and rivers) across latitudinal gradients in the Arctic; (2) insight into how direct and indirect drivers related to climate change impact the biodiversity and trait composition of Arctic aquatic food webs, and ultimately fish production; (3) quantifying uncertainty in biodiversity scenarios for Arctic freshwaters through empirical observations and experimental simulations; and (4) assessing the effects of nutrient enrichment and terrestrial land change on community structural and functional measures across latitudinal gradients in North America and Europe. Other approaches include use of bio-economic models to evaluate socio-economic trade-offs and potential shifts in ecosystem services in Arctic lakes and rivers associated with climate change, nutrient enrichment, and resource exploitation; developing assessment criteria that better quantify the ecological change in Arctic lakes and streams and provide strategies for the early detection of new and/or invasive species and that can feed into the development of biodiversity scenarios; and providing information and research results that better inform resource managers, regulators, and policy makers, as well as people who live in the Arctic and the global community concerned about the ongoing change in Arctic freshwater ecosystems.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.