Long-term effects of socioeconomic activity on ecological stability

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在哥伦比亚大学克里斯蒂娜·道格拉斯博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一位研究不同社会经济生计战略对生态系统影响的早期职业科学家。在世界各地，由小型流动社区主导的人类历史早期一直是研究最少的。相反，考古学家主要专注于大型的、等级森严的、久居的社会，这些社会将我们的观点和结论偏向于一种非常特定的人类社会组织形式。然而，其他类型的人类社区采用的生存战略可以为成功的生命之路战略提供启示，这些战略对于定义“可持续性”和制定目前成功的保护政策是非常宝贵的。通过将我们的注意力转向小规模的社区环境影响，该项目将为过去的土地利用战略及其在过去极端气候波动时期的长期弹性提供新的见解。由于气候变化，环境条件变得越来越不稳定，这项研究的发现对考古学术和现代土地利用政策倡议都具有重要意义。这个国家科学基金会的博士后奖学金将致力于挑战“低影响”和“高影响”土地利用的传统区别，并强调不同经济战略的灵活性质及其对环境的影响。该项目试图回答以下问题：1.觅食社区的长期居住如何影响当地和区域的土壤和植被多样性；2.这些影响与其他社会经济群体(即牧民、农场主)相比如何？3.不同的社会经济战略在生态影响方面观察到的差异和相似之处如何影响我们对当前可持续性的理解？通过将注意力转向小规模的社区环境影响，该项目将开发识别人类生态遗产的新方法。反过来，这将有助于我们更好地了解早期人类社区，他们的社会经济组织，以及不同经济系统对景观生态的影响。这一奖项反映了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。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Kristina Douglass at Columbia University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist studying the impacts of different socioeconomic livelihood strategies on ecological systems. Around the world, the earliest periods of human history, which are dominated by small, mobile communities, are consistently the least well studied. Instead, archaeologists have primarily focused on large, hierarchical, sedentary societies, which skew our perspectives and conclusions to one very specific form of human social organization. However, living strategies employed by other types of human communities can shed light on successful lifeway strategies which are invaluable for defining “sustainability” and developing successful conservation policies in the present. By shifting our attention toward small-scale community environmental impacts, this project will provide new insights into past land-use strategies and their long-term resilience during past periods of extreme climatic fluctuation. As environmental conditions become increasingly erratic due to climate change, the findings of this research hold significance both to archaeological scholarship and modern land-use policy initiatives. This NSF postdoctoral fellowship will work to challenge traditional distinctions of “low-impact” and “high-impact” land-use and instead highlight the flexible nature of different economic strategies and their environmental impacts. The project seeks to answer the following questions: 1. How do long-term habitations of foraging communities impact local and regional soil and vegetation diversity; 2. How do these impacts compare with other socioeconomic groups (i.e., herders, agriculturalists)? And 3. How can differences and similarities observed in ecological impact by different socioeconomic strategies inform our understanding of sustainability in the present? By shifting attention toward small-scale community environmental impacts, this project will develop new approaches for identifying human ecological legacies. In turn, this will help improve our understanding of early human communities, their socioeconomic organizations, and impacts of different economic systems on landscape ecologies.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.