ABSTRACT

Ecological systems face novel, unexpected threats from invasive species- plants or animals that are introduced to a place where they did not originate. Examples of well-known invasive species in the United States include European starlings, zebra mussels, and buffelgrass. Invasive species can increase the risk of wildfires, diminish agricultural yields, and destroy valued natural ecosystems. These problems are particularly vexing for policy makers, who are responsible for avoiding harms from new environmental threats whose causes and consequences are not yet well-understood. This award will explore the spread of invasive buffelgrass in Southern Arizona. The research will focus on buffelgrass response to ecological conditions, land-use patterns, and eradication techniques used by landowners. The results of the study will be used to predict the long-term effects of policies to address invasive species. The results will provide natural resource managers and policy makers with new approaches and tools to develop management systems that respond effectively to emerging threats. The project will also provide diverse students with interdisciplinary STEM training.

External threats associated with environmental change, biological invasions, human migration, and changing land use threaten the stability and resiliency of integrated socio-environmental (CNH2) systems globally. Policy makers' ability to address these threats is limited by incomplete knowledge of how integrated socio-environmental systems will respond to emergent threats, particularly knowledge of how ecological factors, land-use practices, social attitudes and behaviors, and policy responses can jointly affect ecological systems. Using buffelgrass invasion in southern Arizona as a model system, the award will address how do CNH system dynamics change in response to emergent threats, and what policy and governance changes will prompt land managers to take effective, proactive, and sustained actions to address these emergent threats. New methods and theory will be developed to predict how integrated socio-environmental systems respond to change by: 1) developing the spatial-human-ecology model, an agent-based model to predict interactions between natural and human systems; 2) conducting surveys, interviews, and plant demographics studies to empirically parameterize and run the model; 3) working with stakeholders and practitioners to co-produce knowledge about policy options whose effects can be predicted in the model; and 4) interrogating the results of iterative model runs to develop generalizable theory about the conditions that enable effective anticipatory governance in integrated socio-environmental systems. This research addresses a critical need for development of predictive methods to model dynamic interactions between ecological, social, and policy systems and develops the scientific knowledge needed to provide resource managers with the necessary knowledge and tools to enable proactive management of emergent threats to CNH systems.

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.

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