Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: The futures of reef services in the Anthropocene

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1923649
	Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: The futures of reef services in the Anthropocene
	John Kittinger (Principal Investigator)
主持机构	Arizona State University
项目开始年	2019
	2019-04-15
项目结束日期	2021-03-31
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Continuing grant
项目经费	88413(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	Innovative research on the complex interaction of socio-economic and global environmental trends on biodiversity and ecosystem services is needed to help develop more informative scenarios for addressing environmental and human development challenges. To overcome these challenges coupled natural-human systems approaches and analyses are needed. These provide improved scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services that couple the outputs of direct and indirect drivers such as land use, invasive species, overexploitation, biodiversity, environmental change, and pollution. The resulting models provide a methodological state-of-the art that results in more accurate quantitative assessments, better land use, and more effective ecosystem services. Employing this methodology, this research project, which is an international coalition between US scientists and those from eight other nations from around the world seeks to better understand, model, and predict the social-ecological dynamics of coral reef systems, worldwide, across scales and in terms of current drivers impacting coral reef environmental services, especially those related to the abundance and diversity of fish. The research was motivated because coral reefs are the most diverse hotspots of marine life on Earth upon which whose health and resilience the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, worldwide, depend. Because reefs are impacted directly and indirectly by the activity of humans (climate change, erosion, invasive species transport, over harvesting) a holistic model of these interconnected systems are needed to secure long-term human development and well-being, as well as preserve marine biodiversity and critical natural capital. This research focuses on coral reef fish because they are a main link between reef ecosystems and human societies due to the role they play in securing food for humans, recreation, etc. This research employs a focused, transdisciplinary modelling approach that involves the development and application of scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services for coral reefs around the globe and across spatial scales that are relevant to multiple types of ecosystem/conservation management decisions. The work will couple socio-economic dynamics with biodiversity considerations to examine the impacts of various drivers and impacts of environmental change on reef systems, specifically the impact on fish. Projections of the impacts and expected changes in ecosystem services due to different environmental drivers and combinations of drivers will be made out to the year 2100. Broader impacts of the work include the collaboration of US scientists with world leaders in coral reef ecology from eight other countries (The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Switzerland), with each country funding its own scientists and parts of the project. There will also be significant outreach to stakeholder groups, including conservationists and policy makers, and the public via a range of print and multimedia outlets (newsletter, films, the Internet, and public access to research data and modeling software). To reach a broad audience, some of the materials will be generated in multiple languages. To disseminate results to other scientists and key stakeholders and to generate additional discussion on the topic, a series of summer schools will be developed and a final symposium with an international participant list will be held. Additional impacts include the support of a researcher from a group underrepresented in the sciences at an institution in an EPSCoR state (Hawaii) which helps to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences and the training of a postdoctoral scholar in transdisciplinary, international, team-based research. This award supports US researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a coalition of 26 funding agencies from 23 countries through the Belmont Forum call for proposals on "Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services". The call was a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that contribute to the development of scenarios, models, and decision-support tools for understanding and solving critical issues facing our planet. The goal of the competition was to improve and apply participatory scenario methods to enhance research relevance and its acceptance and to address gaps in methods for modelling impact drivers and policy interventions. It was also to develop and communicate levels of uncertainty associated with the models, to improve data accessibility and fill gaps in knowledge. Using this methodology, the funded project will examine the impacts of direct and indirect drivers of human environmental change on coral reef systems and their associated ecosystem services. The project will quantify five key ecosystems services provided by coral reef fish. Data analysis will include biomass estimates tied to human livelihoods, nutrient cycling that affects fish stock productivity, regulation of the carbon cycle that affects CO2 concentrations, fish nutritional value and food security, and the cultural value of coral reef systems that sustains human wellbeing and tourism activities. It will also determine the governance, social, economic, and environmental conditions under which coral reef ecosystem services are currently maintained or threatened by. This will include multivariate and non-linear model analysis of a global database of fish surveys from over 5,000 coral reefs encompassing gradients of environments, habitats, and impact of fishing. Research goals will be to predict the potential futures of shallow coral reef ecosystems and their services under various global change scenarios and their ability to deliver services up to the year 2100. Research results will be generated in such a way that they can be used to inform decision making and management approaches that can aid reef-dependent communities globally and maintain critical marine biodiversity. 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.
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/213884
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	John Kittinger .Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: The futures of reef services in the Anthropocene.2019.