Collaborative Research: GCR:Can improved ecological forecasting accelerate sustainability transformation in urban lighting?

实现国家可持续发展目标需要在社会的许多领域迅速采用更可持续的做法，但向可持续做法的过渡往往很慢。该项目测试了这些转变是否可以通过以下方式加速：(1)创建创新的生态预测，预测何时何地更可持续的做法将产生最大的效益；(2)让受影响的社区参与共同实施预测和倡导可持续转型的过程。研究对象为夜间人造光的扩散及其对候鸟的影响。ALAN正在全球范围内迅速增加，其好处被对生物多样性、生态系统和人类健康普遍存在的负面影响所抵消。ALAN的一个主要生态后果是破坏了鸟类迁徙——每年有数百万只鸟死于与光线充足的建筑物的碰撞——这导致了鸟类数量的普遍下降。阿兰-鸟类迁徙系统是这项研究的理想选择，因为就像许多恶劣的环境问题一样，环境问题是复杂的社会和文化过程的产物，而这些问题已被证明难以用传统方法解决。该项目采用跨学科的融合方法，将生态预测的进展与社区参与奖学金的社会和政治科学的进展结合起来。测试生态预测创新的可持续性影响的实验将与聚合研究伙伴联盟共同设计和实施。该项目将对ALAN采用可持续实践的途径产生理解，这些新知识可用于帮助解决其他社会-环境冲突。该项目的重点是测试可持续性转型科学理论的一个关键预测-创新起源于倡导联盟，然后在子系统层面积累，以推动可持续性转型（例如，新政策）。在第一阶段，调查收集了关于ALAN系统的详细的国家调查信息，并针对ALAN的影响对现有的鸟类迁徙预测进行了变革性的技术改进。然后，这些新的社会和生态知识将用于与特定城市试验场的倡导联盟合作，共同实施第二阶段的可持续性转型实验。这些实验将使用有针对性的消息传递活动来促进ALAN缓解。实验将集中在以可持续性为导向的联盟上，因为这些倡导者预计将具有高杠杆作用，可以影响整个ALAN子系统向可持续性的激进转变。实验对ALAN的影响，ALAN对候鸟的影响，以及人类对ALAN的行为和态度将被量化。通过这种两阶段的方法，该项目将产生一种新的理解，即如何将来自趋同研究方法的创新应用于可持续性科学和政策框架，以加速变革。这些结果将有助于理解社区和研究人员如何更广泛地共同参与邪恶的环境问题，以推动向可持续发展的转变。结果将创造新的、可能具有变革性的理解，即生态预测如何促进可持续性转型。该项目由增长趋同研究计划和促进竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。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。

Achieving national sustainability goals will require rapid adoption of more sustainable practices in many areas of society but transitions to sustainable practices are often slow. This project tests whether these transitions can be accelerated by (1) creating innovative ecological forecasts that predict where and when more sustainable practices would have the greatest benefits and (2) engaging impacted communities in the process of co-implementing forecasts and advocating for sustainability transitions. The study system is the proliferation of artificial lights at night (ALAN) and its impacts on migrant birds. ALAN is increasing rapidly worldwide, and its benefits are countered by pervasive negative consequences for biodiversity, ecosystems, and human health. A major ecological consequence of ALAN is disruption of bird migration – millions of birds die annually in collisions with well-lit buildings – which contributes to widespread bird population declines. The ALAN-bird migration system is ideal for this study because, like many wicked environmental problems, environmental concerns emerge as a product of complex social and cultural processes that have proven difficult to resolve using traditional approaches. This project employs a transdisciplinary convergence approach to integrating advances in ecological forecasting with those in the social and political science of community engaged scholarship. Experiments testing sustainability impacts of innovations in ecological forecasting will be co-designed and implemented with a coalition of convergence research partners. The project will generate an understanding of pathways by which sustainable practices are adopted for ALAN, this new knowledge can be used to help address other societal-environmental conflicts.The project focuses on testing a key prediction of sustainability transformations science theory – that innovations originate within advocacy coalitions then accumulate at the subsystem level to drive sustainability transformations (e.g., new policies). During phase one the investigation gathers detailed national survey information on the ALAN system and creates transformational technological improvements in existing bird migration forecasts specific to impacts of ALAN. This new social and ecological knowledge will then be used to engage with advocacy coalitions in specific urban testbed sites to co-implement sustainability transformation experiments during phase two. These experiments will use targeted messaging campaigns to foster ALAN mitigation. Experiments will be focused on sustainability-oriented coalitions because these advocates are predicted to have high leverage to affect radical transformation toward sustainability across the ALAN subsystem. Impacts of the experiments on ALAN, impacts of ALAN on migrant birds, and human behaviors and attitudes toward ALAN will be quantified. Through this two-phase approach this project will produce a new understanding of how innovations derived from a convergence research approach can be employed in a sustainability science and policy framework to accelerate transformations. These outcomes will contribute understanding of how communities and researchers can co-engage with wicked environmental problems more broadly to drive transformations toward sustainability. Results will create new, and potentially transformative, understanding of how ecological forecasting contributes to sustainability transformations. This project is jointly funded by the Growing Convergence Research Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.