NSF | CNH: Ecosystems and Societies: Divergent Trajectories and Coevolution.

Project Overview

  • The Mongolian Plateau includes two regions with similar ecological systems but contrasting socioeconomic systems: Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. The Plateau has increasingly received worldwide attention due its rapid biophysical and socioeconomic changes. Building upon intensive previous work in the region, the purpose of this study is to bring together a multidisciplinary research team to examine and model the changes of the natural and human systems on the Plateau as well as the critical feedbacks between them over recent decades. The project team hypothesizes that while climate change has created pressure on ecosystems and societies in the Plateau, the distinct socioeconomic conditions and development paths of the different administrative units involved have also had a significant effect on the relationships and feedbacks within the human and natural systems. The team will also test the hypothesis that the human influences on the systems exceeded those of the biophysical changes but the significance varies in time, location, and ecological setting. The five major underlying processes studied for the natural systems will include the changes in water fluxes, radiation, soil heat fluxes, primary production, and carbon loss, while the five processes for the human systems are economic growth, population growth, urbanization, technology advancement, and lifestyle change. The system functions and changes will be examined by the life expectancy index, income index, education index, net primary production, evapotranspiration, and ecosystem carbon loss. More importantly, the project team will focus on the relationships between these functions, such as the productivity vs. income index. The connection between the human and natural systems will be viewed through the lens of land use cover and land use change. The progression of causes and consequences will be examined at various levels through three tasks.
  • 1) Modeling household behaviors and surrounding ecosystems
  • 2) Studying divergent trajectories for Mongolian systems from past to future
  • 3) Understanding the vulnerabilities within the system and possible future adaptation strategies toward a sustainable Plateau. The multiple dimensions of the systems will be integrated together systemically, holistically, and across disciplines..

The results of this study will have global implications, especially to this and other regions that are vulnerable to climate and socioeconomic changes. The project will strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration between ecology, economics, anthropology, sociology, and demography and will provide a great opportunity for junior scholars as well as graduate students to conduct interdisciplinary research. Data and findings will be disseminated through a series of transformative activities that benefit the people on the Plateau, students in the US, China, and Mongolia, the scientific community, and stakeholders and policymakers worldwide. Recognizing past difficulties in accessing the data for the Plateau, the project team will first develop a comprehensive database that can be shared with the entire scientific community. Intensive training classes and cross-campus courses will be made available through a virtual classroom using state-of-the-art cyber technology to link researchers and students in the US, Inner Mongolia, and Mongolia. Researchers will deliver invited guest lectures at least twice per term via the virtual classroom and students from the participating universities will be simultaneously exposed to diverse views from each other?s institutions. These lectures will also be openly available to other institutions.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK and HYPOTHESES

Our CNH cconceptual framework to understand the drivers, mechanisms, and consequences of socioeconomic and physical changes on the functional changes of the HS and NS on the Plateau, where IM and MG have headed on different direction over the past 70 years after separation. LUC and LCC will be considered as the intermediate variables facilitating the causal relationships as well as the foundation for the trajectories. A particular technical challenge is to understand the impact of ecosystem/societal functions from coupled socioeconomic and biophysical changes where the HS is often delineated by administrative boundaries while NS is not (Zhen et al. 2010). These differences will likely yield different land use among the units and consequently alter the functions and dynamics of ecosystems, which, in turn, will have direct feedback on the socioeconomic development. Using the livestock statistics of IM and MG as an example, major policy changes in both regions appear to be responsible for the fluctuation in the livestock population.

 

 

About Us

The LEES Lab at the Michigan State University, directed by Dr.Jiquan Chen, is interested in scientific investigations and education on fundamental ecosystem and landscape processes for understanding ecosystem functions and management. Our current studies are focused on the carbon and water cycles of different ecosystems (grassland, desert, forest, cropland, wetlands, freshwater) at multiple spatial and temporal scales, bioenergy systems and resource uses, coupled interactions and feedback between climatic change and human activities, and sustainable management and conservation. Our research projects, spreading mostly across North American and Asian landscapes, are based on sound field experiments and monitoring stations, state-of-the-art equipment and technology, modeling, and remote sensing technology. 

 

Jiquan Chen, Ph.D. Professor
Research Interests: My scientific interests have been evolving since 1979, from prairie ecology and forest dynamics to 3-D canopy structure, forest fragmentation, edge effects, riparian zone, and micrometeorology.  My current research focus lies in the coupled effects of global climate change and human activities on terrestrial ecosystems, global change ecology, bioenergy, and carbon/water fluxes.  In addition to my addictions to the new sensors and technology (e.g., GIS and RS), I love carbon and water cycle as much as biking and martial art practices.
jqchen@msu.edu

 
 

Ranjeet John, Ph.D. Research Associate
Applications of remote sensing and GIS to study the biophysics of carbon, water & energy fluxes at varying spatio-temporal scales (scaling up from landscape level to region)
• across biomes & land cover use types, but primarily grasslands, croplands, forests
• Climate-vegetation interaction using long term data records
• Ecosystem ecology, land cover/land use, climate change
• Ecosystem response to extreme climate events
• Biophysical controls on biofuel crops and sustainability
ranjeetj@msu.edu (CV)

 
 

Changliang Shao, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Associate
My research interests aimed at understanding human-environment interactions through a focus on climatic change land-use and land-cover changes through using eddy covariance technique in multiple ecosystems: from observation to data analysis of carbon, water and energy fluxes. I have been the one maintaining two mobile flux towers in Inner Mongolia for 3 years and opened the eddy covariance data in public via internet. Recent work has used two mobile eddy flux towers to study different disturbance ecosystems under the same environment, which is valuable for modeling precision, and contribute us to understand the underlying effect mechanism through different management types. I am maintaining three fluxes towers in Great Lakes by the supporting of NSF, and am a technical adviser of six towers in Mongolian Plateau.
clshao@msu.edu (CV)

 

Hogeun Park, Ph.D. Student
parkhoge@msu.edu (CV)

 

 

 

Contact

CGCEO, 202 Manly Miles Bldg. 1405 South Harrison Road Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823 Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx; Fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx