Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Balancing BiOdiversity CoNservation with Development in Amazon WetlandS

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1852113
	Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Balancing BiOdiversity CoNservation with Development in Amazon WetlandS
	Leandro Castello (Principal Investigator)
主持机构	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
项目开始年	2019
	2019-03-15
项目结束日期	2022-02-28
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Continuing grant
项目经费	78187(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 of 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. This international collaborative research project uses this methodology to develop scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services for selected floodplains of muddy (i.e., whitewater) rivers in the central Amazon region and their adjacent uplands. Amazon floodplains were selected because they are typical of tropical river floodplains that support high levels of biodiversity and provide fundamental services, such as water purification, fish habitat, and flood mitigation. Like other tropical river systems, the Amazon sustains the livelihoods of many indigenous and poverty-stricken human populations and its flood plains are being increasingly threatened by development such as dams, agriculture, ranching, the expansion of road and rail networks, and climate change. For example, in the lower Amazon over half of the floodplain forest cover has been lost since the late 1970s. This project studies the floodplains of two contrasting major whitewater rivers: The Amazon River (Brazil and Colombia) and its tributary the Jurua River (Brazil). The research begins with working with stakeholders in a collaborative planning process that reflects local concerns and priorities and builds off local knowledge of the area. Work involves mapping targeted floodplains and adjacent upland habitats using remote sensing and field data. Goals are to predict changes in flooding patterns under climate change scenarios and model the interactions among biodiversity, habitat type, hydrology, and management regimes, with results being disseminated to stakeholders and the broader scientific community. Broader impacts of the work include international collaboration with scientists in Brazil, Columbia, France, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom and improved understanding of how human activities along the floodplains of tropical rivers impact fisheries, food security, water quality, and biodiversity. Other broader impacts include development of a template for habitat and biodiversity assessment and for participatory planning that can be applied and adapted to similar types of river floodplains across tropical landscapes. The project also supports an investigator whose gender is underrepresented in the sciences. 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. Funds support US participants in a large, seven-country, international consortium of scientists studying aquatic-terrestrial interfaces in the Amazon Basin. These areas support high levels of biodiversity and also supply fundamental services to human populations such as water purification, fish habitat, and flood mitigation as well as sustain the livelihoods and food security of subsistence-level human populations. Over the past several decades, development, cultivation, ranching, and commercial fisheries have disrupted traditional patterns of Amazon river floodplain resource use. The goals of this research are to use the floodplains of two major and contrasting whitewater rivers: the mainstream Amazon river (Brazil and Colombia) and its tributary the Jurua (Brazil) to contrast the impacts of human development on their physical character and biodiversity. The project engages key stakeholders, including local indigenous peoples, in a research co-design effort. Work will involve mapping floodplain and adjacent upland habitats using remote sensing and field data; predicting changes in flooding patterns under climate change scenarios; and modeling the interactions among biodiversity, habitat type, hydrology, and management regimes. The project will test new methods in remote sensing using satellite-based mapping of phytoplankton diversity and will estimate forest biomass using newly available spaceborne LIDAR data. It will evaluate freshwater ecology using environmental DNA metabar-coding and model fish movement based on hydrologic connectivity and foraging patterns. Participatory prospective analysis will enable collective definition of scenarios with the support of species distribution models to analyze possible impacts on biodiversity. Results of this work, combined with local knowledge and stakeholder feedback, will allow a deep analysis of public policy efficiency in relation to wetland conservation and sustainable development goal targets. The work will also result in the development of a template for habitat and biodiversity assessment and for participatory modeling of multi-scale scenarios that can be applied and adapted to analogous floodplain systems in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. 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/213290
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Leandro Castello .Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Balancing BiOdiversity CoNservation with Development in Amazon WetlandS.2019.