Focused CoPe: Supporting Environmental Justice in Connected Coastal Communities through a Regional Approach to Collaborative Community Science

该项目将加强北卡罗莱纳州沿海Albemarle-Pamlico河口系统沿岸社区的沿海恢复能力。该地区受到水质差的影响，威胁到生态系统和对沿海社区重要的经济活动。研究小组将测量污染物如何随时间在自然和人造环境中流动，以了解控制其分布及其对流域影响的过程。该中心的一个关键目标是整合学术界、社区、非政府组织和政府利益攸关方的广泛联盟，以制定缓解战略，并了解适应和管理计划中的权衡取舍。该中心的沿海环境司法研究所将作为中心协调单位，促进社区内部的联系，协调实习（高中生和大学生）与合作伙伴的联系，并与社区利益相关者进行沟通。作为一所主要的本科院校，曼哈顿学院还将整合STEM与非STEM领域（商业和管理），以更好地为社区的下一代决策者做好准备和提供信息。让不同的社区参与区域科学伙伴关系是否使他们更能抵御沿海灾害，更不容易受到环境不公正的影响？该项目将调查社区成员、区域利益相关者和学术研究人员之间科学知识的共同生产如何有助于理解影响沿海灾害复原力的社会环境驱动因素，以及采取克服这些因素的解决方案，特别是对那些受到恶劣水质、飓风、洪水、干旱和海平面上升不成比例影响的边缘化人群。北卡罗莱纳州帕姆利科湾周边地区不同的经济利益、显著的种族不平等、不同程度的洪水和水质风险，以及这些沿海水域的生态和经济重要性，使这个河口成为CoPe中心的理想研究区域。该项目的利益相关者代表了渔民、农民、地方和州政府、游客和居民，他们在多个嵌套的决策尺度上反映了基于环境态度、经济激励和不公平以及社会合作倾向的不同社会背景。这些环境本身依赖于个人对身份、信任、规范和对环境系统的控制的感知。我们的学术研究团队通过追求四个目标，采用跨学科的方法来理解这个复杂的系统：(1)绘制定义区域社会工程环境系统（SEES）的关键自然、建筑和社会经济资源和相互依赖关系；(2)了解沿海灾害如何加剧该地区的脆弱性；(3)确定适合当地的适应和缓解战略的机会，以建立社区和区域的复原力；(4)建立沿海环境司法研究所，作为促进和支持整个区域内外不同社区利益相关者团体之间合作的长期机制。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。

The project will strengthen coastal resilience in communities along the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary system of coastal North Carolina. This area has been impacted by poor water quality that threatens ecosystems and economic activities important to coastal communities. The team of researchers will measure how contaminants flow throughout the natural and built environment over time to understand processes that control their distribution and their impact on the watershed. A key goal of the Hub is to integrate a broad coalition of academic, community, NGO and government stakeholders to develop mitigation strategies and understand tradeoffs in adaptation and management plans. The Hub’s Coastal Environmental Justice Institute will serve as the central coordinating unit to catalyze connections within the community, coordinate internships (high school and college students) embedded with partners and communicate with community stakeholders. Manhattan College, a primarily undergraduate institution, will also serve to integrate STEM with non-STEM fields (business and management) to better prepare and inform the next generation of decision makers in the community. Does engaging diverse communities in regional science partnerships make them more resilient to coastal hazards and less susceptible to environmental injustices? This project will investigate how the co-production of scientific knowledge between community members, regional stakeholders, and academic researchers contributes to understanding socioenvironmental drivers that impact resilience to coastal hazards and the adoption of solutions to overcome them, particularly for marginalized populations that are being disproportionately affected by poor water quality, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and sea level rise. Divergent economic interests, significant racial inequities, and differing degrees of flood and water quality risk for communities throughout the region around North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound, along with the ecologic and economic importance of these coastal waters, make this estuary an ideal study area for a CoPe hub. Stakeholders in the project represent fishers, farmers, local and state government, tourists, and residents at multiple nested scales of decision making reflecting different social contexts built on environmental attitudes, economic incentives and inequities, and propensities for social cooperation. These contexts are themselves dependent on individual perceptions of identity, trust, norms, and control over the environmental system. Our team of academic researchers takes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding this complex system by pursuing four objectives: (1) mapping key natural, built, and socioeconomic resources and interdependencies that define the regional socio-engineered- environmental system (SEES); (2) understanding how coastal hazards enhance vulnerabilities in the region; (3) identifying opportunities for locally appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies to build community and regional resilience; and (4) establishing a Coastal Environmental Justice Institute as a long-term mechanism to promote and support collaboration among stakeholder groups from diverse communities throughout the region and beyond.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.