RII Track-2 FEC: Resilience Informatics for the Convergence of Critical Capacities to Address Regional-scale Environmental Change

在人类面临巨大不确定性的时候，技术、数据计算能力和理论方面的重大进步正在生态专业中汇聚。许多生态系统正在经历迅速和突然的崩溃，并过渡到生产力较低的生态系统状态，威胁到人类赖以生存的基本生态系统服务。粮食和水安全、农村经济、水权、避免野火灾害，甚至公立学校教育的资金，都受到威胁，因为植被以前所未有的速度和地理范围发生的简单过渡在前几代人的生活中是无法比拟的。该项目将建立关键的专业知识，并以新的方式利用技术来应对管理的重大挑战，以避免大规模的区域范围的植被过渡。复原力理论和对自然界制度变迁的正式研究是近50年来生态学领域的基础科学追求，技术和计算能力现在已经到了可以在复原力科学的研究和应用中启动下一层次分析的地步。该项目将开发复原力信息筛选工具，以便更先进和更早地检测植被过渡。该项目将建立关键能力，以探索这种新的、变革性的信息学方法进入社会治理结构，从而改进避免社会生态系统关键转变的选择。跟踪和预测大规模的生态系统转变具有国家和国际重要性，是在不断变化的世界中确保不同人口未来生计、个人安全、粮食安全和水安全的关键。这项研究汇聚了内布拉斯加州大学林肯分校和蒙大拿大学的教职员工，他们有一个共同的愿景--建立足够的能力来应对重大挑战，避免生态系统中的不良转变，这些转变的后果超出了任何一名研究人员的学科专业知识的传统。我们提出了一种空间信息学方法，将复原力理论的最新进展与最先进的牧场土地覆盖和分析数据集以及强大的云计算平台联系起来，作为筛选工具，用于更先进和更早地检测跨生态系统的制度变化。与此同时，我们建议进行基础社会科学研究，以更好地了解在工作场所应用创新技术方法建立复原力的障碍和机会。我们将利用新兴的大数据方法进行社会和行为数据分析，开创一种快速、战略性识别个人和社会群体的方法，提高应对未来政权更迭和其他国家优先考虑的环境挑战的意愿和能力。我们与社会和生物物理科学学院的合作将参与内布拉斯加州和蒙大拿州的景观治理合作进程，包括资源使用者和管理者群体，并将这些知识转化为积极主动的战略，通过适应和复原力建设进程在生态变化发生之前应对各种规模的生态变化。这一合作建立在五个关键汇合点之上，这五个汇合点建立了：通过招聘和培训早期职业教师来维持研究生产率的平台；国家认可的恢复力科学教育计划；以及公共和私人利益相关者更多地获得网络基础设施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Major advancements in technology, data computation power, and theory are converging in the ecological profession at a time of great uncertainty for humanity. Many ecosystems are experiencing rapid and sudden collapses and transitioning to less productive ecosystem states, threatening fundamental ecosystem services upon which humanity relies. Food and water security, rural economies, water rights, wildfire disaster avoidance, even funding for public school education are all threatened as a result of simple transitions in vegetation occurring at a rate and geographic scope that is unmatched during the lives of previous generations. This project will build critical expertise and leverage technology in new ways to confront the grand challenge of management to avoid large, regional-scale transitions in vegetation. Resilience theory and the formal study of regime shifts in nature have been foundational science pursuits for nearly 50 years in of ecology, and technology and computational power are now at a point that allows launch of the next level of analysis in the study and application of resilience science. This project will develop resilience informatics screening tools for more advanced and earlier detection of vegetation transitions. The project will create critical capacities to explore this new and transformative informatics approach into social governance structures and thus improve options for avoiding critical transitions in social-ecological systems.Tracking and predicting large-scale ecosystem transitions are of national and international importance and key to securing the future livelihoods, personal security, food security, and water security of diverse populations in a changing world. This research converges faculty from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Montana with a shared vision - to build sufficient capacity to address the grand challenge of avoiding undesirable transitions in ecological systems that are so severe that their consequences go beyond the traditions of any one individual investigator's disciplinary expertise. We propose a spatial informatics approach that links recent advances in resilience theory with a state-of-the-art rangeland landcover and analysis dataset, and a powerful cloud-computing platform, as screening tools for more advanced and earlier detection of regime shifts across ecosystems. At the same time, we propose basic social science research to better understand the barriers and opportunities to applying innovative technological approaches to build resilience across working lands. We will leverage emerging, big-data approaches to social and behavioral data analysis to pioneer an approach for rapid and strategic identification of individuals and social groups with increased willingness and capacity to address future regime shifts and other environmental challenges of national priority. Our collaboration of social and biophysical science faculty will engage with collaborative landscape governance processes in Nebraska and Montana, include groups of resource users and managers, and translate this knowledge into proactive strategies for addressing various scales of ecological change before it occurs, through adaptation and resilience-building processes. This collaboration is built on five key convergence points which establish: a platform for sustaining research productivity through recruitment and training of early-career faculty; a nationally-recognized resilience-science education program; and greater access to cyberinfrastructure among public and private stakeholders.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.