SRS RN: Integrating Land and Sea: Building Coastal Resilience and Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Urban-Rural Systems

尽管海洋和近岸生态系统是沿海社区经济和文化特性的重要组成部分，但在农村和城市社区作出规划和管理决定时，沿海资源与当地经济之间的联系往往被忽视。这一可持续区域系统研究网络(SRS RN)项目将通过一系列参与性研讨会将研究人员和社区利益攸关方的跨学科小组聚集在一起，共同制定解决马萨诸塞州社会环境挑战的方案，明确包括人与沿海环境之间的联系，帮助培养一种“沿海扫盲”，并建立一个合作研究网络，共同创造解决方案。马萨诸塞州沿海社区相关利益攸关部门的例子包括渔业和近海可再生能源。该项目还将为K-12教师创建一个专业学习社区，以制定与马萨诸塞州社区相关问题有关的沿海扫盲课程，为可持续未来的可能解决办法提供一种更具包容性的方法。研究网络将探索不同的视角、系统思维和了解方式如何有助于沿海的可持续性，并将与通常在解决办法和决策中没有发言权的沿海利益攸关方接触。研究网络的一个重要成果将是一个可推广到其他沿海地区的模型，展示如何利用环境数据与复杂的社会数据相结合，使社区具有扫盲能力和机构，以得出可行的结果。该项目的目标是建立一个包容的可持续区域系统研究网络研究网络(SRS RN)，以协作应对马萨诸塞州城乡社区之间的社会环境挑战。这个RN将利用人类系统和沿海环境之间的联系，承认环境、社会和经济利益之间的内在不确定性和权衡。它将通过一系列参与性建模研讨会，将不同的跨学科研究人员、教育工作者、政策制定者和社区利益攸关方聚集在一起，展示当地的知识和需求，确定研究问题，并概述将用于最终的RN Track 1提案的方法。该计划是将该网络的发展与创建一个学习社区结合起来，以促进沿海扫盲和系统思维，并能够在涉及社区相关问题的情况下就地解决社会环境问题。这个多样化的学习社区将来自蓝色和绿色经济领域，共同开发社会学习的过程和途径，将人类和自然海岸系统结合起来，朝着有效和有影响力的决策方向发展。RN将探索社区沿海扫盲的系统方法和连接沿海、农村和城市社区的生态系统服务方法如何有助于促进以可持续发展为重点的治理和决策，以提高面对社区相关变化的韧性和稳健性。它将探讨不同规模的治理和决策空间如何影响改善自然-人类系统的可持续性和复原力的能力。预期通过建立参与性模式促进沿海扫盲的进程将产生开放的工具、系统的教育资源和进程、一个指导社会、环境和经济研究以及资源设计各学科之间融合的模式框架。通过这一过程开发的资产将服务于面临复杂环境和治理问题的社区的需求，这些问题源于土地使用、经济和人口趋势、文化知识资金缺口以及获得教育和社会服务的机会不足。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Connections between coastal resources and local economies are often overlooked when making planning and management decisions across rural and urban communities, even though marine and near-shore ecosystems are important parts of the economy and cultural identity of coastal communities. This Sustainable Regional Systems Research Networks (SRS RN) project will bring an interdisciplinary group of researchers and community stakeholders together through a series of participatory workshops to collaboratively build solutions to socio-environmental challenges in Massachusetts that explicitly include connections between people and coastal environments, helping to foster a kind of “coastal literacy” and building a collaborative research network to co-create solutions. Examples of relevant stakeholder sectors within Massachusetts coastal communities include fishing and offshore renewable energy. This project will also create a community of professional learning for K-12 teachers to develop curriculum associated with coastal literacy as it relates to community-relevant issues in Massachusetts, providing a more inclusive approach to possible solutions for a sustainable future. The research network will explore how a diverse perspective, systems thinking and ways of knowing can contribute to coastal sustainability, and will engage with coastal stakeholders who do not normally have a voice in solutions and decisions. An important outcome of the research network will be a model that can be generalized to other coastal areas, showing how to leverage environmental data to integrate with complex social data to empower communities with the literacy and agency to derive actionable outcomes.The goal of this project is to build an inclusive Sustainable Regional Systems Research Networks Research Network (SRS RN) to collaboratively address socio-environmental challenges among urban and rural communities in Massachusetts. This RN will leverage linkages between human systems and coastal environments, acknowledging the inherent uncertainty and tradeoffs across environmental, social, and economic interests. It will bring together a diverse and interdisciplinary group of researchers, educators, policymakers and community stakeholders through a sequence of participatory modeling workshops to surface local knowledge and needs, identify research questions, and outline methodologies that will be used for an eventual RN Track 1 proposal. The plan is to integrate the development of the network with the creation of a learning community to foster coastal literacy and systems thinking, and to enable place-based socio-environmental problem-solving as it relates to community-relevant issues. This diverse learning community will come from across the blue and green economy to jointly develop processes and pathways for social learning that couples human and natural coastal systems toward effective and impactful decision-making. The RN will explore how a systems approach to community coastal literacy and an ecosystem services approach to connecting coastal, rural, and urban communities can contribute to sustainability-focused governance and decision-making that promotes resilience and robustness in the face of community-relevant change. It will explore how different scales of governance and decision space affect the ability to improve the sustainability and resilience of natural-human systems. It is anticipated that the process of advancing coastal literacy through participatory model building will result in open tools, systemic educational resources and processes, a model framework to guide convergence among disciplines in social, environmental, and economic research, and design of resources. Assets developed through this process will serve the needs of communities facing the complex environmental and governance issues that emerge from the confluence of land use, economic and demographic trends, gaps in cultural funds of knowledge, and inadequate access to education and social services.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.