Collaborative Research: Socio-economic patterns, public perceptions, and climate vulnerabilities of water resources and quality

获得清洁水是健康社会的基本要求。然而，过去十年中发生的许多水安全危机表明，获得安全饮用水并不是保证。此外，在社区和个人两级，对水问题的相对脆弱性也各不相同。个人特征可能会影响对水的看法，进而影响有关用水和相关健康结果的决定。该项目汇集了一个跨学科的科学家团队，研究与水资源有关的社会，行为，健康和气候问题。除了在一个为少数群体服务的机构发展能力外，该项目还通过课程编制和实践研究机会推进本科教学和培训。该项目测试了社会科学理论，这些理论认为生态和社会因素共同作用，影响水和气候的脆弱性。研究目标包括研究社会，经济和政治因素的影响，在水质修复工作的背景下，与当代和历史的变化，部署这些努力，并提供一个分析框架转移到其他环境修复项目。为此，该项目记录了不同利益攸关方对水的看法，以及这些看法如何与个人和社区特征相互作用。该项目还分析和提供数据，以记录更广泛的历史气候波动范围内的气候变异性到层结果。重要的是，这一气候历史将为该地区的人们在空间和时间上的生活经历提供背景，并允许改进建模，以预测降水和水资源获取的未来变化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

Access to clean water is a fundamental requirement for a healthy society. Numerous water safety crises in the past decade have shown that access to safe drinking water is not a guarantee, however. Moreover, there is community- and individual-level heterogeneity in relative vulnerability to water problems. Individual characteristics are likely to affect perceptions of water, in turn affecting decisions surrounding water use and associated health outcomes. This project brings together an interdisciplinary team of scientists to examine social, behavioral, health, and climatic issues related to water resources. In addition to developing capacity at a minority-serving institution, the project advances undergraduate teaching and training through curricular development and hands-on research opportunities. The project tests social science theories positing that ecological and social factors work together to affect water and climate vulnerability. Research objectives include examining the influence of social, economic, and political factors in water quality remediation efforts in a context with contemporary and historical variation in deployment of such efforts; and providing an analytical framework transferable to other environmental remediation projects. To do so, this project documents perceptions of water among diverse stakeholders, and how these perceptions interact with individual and community characteristics. The project also analyzes and provides data to document the full range of climate variability to layer results within broader historical climatic fluctuations. Importantly, this climate history will provide context for the lived experiences of people in the region over space and time and allow improved modeling to anticipate future changes in precipitation and water access.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.