CHANS-Net: The International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems

• Slowing the Expansion of Woodlands and Increasing the Resilience of Grasslands in the Southern Great Plains

  Published on November 3, 2015
  What determines the boundaries between grasslands and shrublands or forests is of major scientific interest, particularly since these boundaries can shift over time, sometimes relatively swiftly and seemingly permanently. In large areas of the centra...

• Competing Demands and Future Vulnerability of Groundwater: Drinking Water Quality and Food Security in Arsenic-Impacted South and Southeast Asia

  Published on November 3, 2015
  Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are exposed to dangerous arsenic (As) levels by drinking untreated groundwater. As contamination causes a variety of severe health problems in humans, including several forms of cancer and increased infant mor...

• Bridging Communities and Scales Through a Global Transdisciplinary Mountain Sustainability Network

  Published on October 26, 2015
  Mountains provide an important and distinctive type of coupling between natural and human systems. First, mountains themselves have especially diverse and intricate arrangements of habitats for both wildlife and people. Second, mountains are prone to...

• The Coupled Human Health and Environmental Dynamics of Schistosomiasis

  Published on October 26, 2015
  Ecological damage caused by human activity can directly influence infectious diseases and human health, but public health campaigns rarely turn to ecological solutions to mitigate infectious disease risk, instead favoring traditional approaches, such...

• A Model for Groundwater Allocation and Management at the Bakken Shale in Western North Dakota

  Published on October 26, 2015
  Unconventional oil and gas production in U.S. has increased dramatically since 2008 due to advancement in hydraulic fracturing technology (also known as "fracking"). According to Time Magazine (October 14, 2013), the oil production at the B...

• Synergies and Feedbacks Between Local Direct Democracy and Large-Scale Biodiversity Conservation Efforts

  Published on October 20, 2015
  In much of the U.S., natural communities of native species remain largely within protected areas. The maintenance of biodiversity thus relies on how strongly native wildlife communities motivate conservation and on how effectively conservation pro...

• Forest Governance and Climate Change in Driving Native Insect Outbreaks

  Published on October 20, 2015
  Outbreaks of native insects periodically strip forests in many parts of the U.S., and understanding the natural forces that lead to outbreaks has been a long-standing scientific goal. Much less studied has been how human activities may interact wi...

• The Dynamics of Multi-Scalar Adaptation in Megacities

  Published on October 20, 2015
  Megacities (defined as cities with populations over 10 million) are highly vulnerable to environmental change but their size and complexity can make successful adaptation difficult. This interdisciplinary research project will study the challenge ...

• Sound as an Element in Coupled Natural and Human Systems

  Published on October 20, 2015
  Recent scientific research has demonstrated that human-generated sound can have a significant impact on the functioning and character of natural ecosystems and on human well-being. This interdisciplinary research project will study the interaction...

• Resilience and Adaptive Capacity of Small-Scale Fishing Communities and Coastal Marine Ecosystems to Environmental and Economic Variability

  Published on September 25, 2015
  Fisheries are an important source of food and income for approximately 520 million people globally. Small-scale fisheries, in particular, are incredibly important; they employ more than 90 percent of the world's approximately 35 million capture fishe...

• Processes and Factors Affecting Humans and Wildlife As Coupled Systems Across a Sociocultural Gradient

  Published on September 25, 2015
  Human-wildlife conflict is a global phenomenon, with species that more readily adapt to human-modified environments directly competing with people for food and space. Scientists recognize the need to assess conflict between humans and wildlife as dyn...

• Complex Dynamics of Telecoupled Human and Natural Systems

  Published on September 25, 2015
  Studies on human-nature dynamics have usually focused on a single coupled human and natural system. However, almost all coupled systems interact with other systems, including those far away.  Even though decades of drastically increased distant ...

• Coupled Social and Ecological Consequences of Conservation Easements

  Published on September 25, 2015
  A private land conservation tool, conservation easements, have become widely used in the United States over the past thirty years, and their popularity may correspond to tax laws creating incentives for private land conservation in the public interes...

• The Potential for Aquaculture in Lake Victoria and Implications for Wild Fisheries and Fish Commodity Markets

  Published on September 25, 2015
  Aquaculture (farmed fish) surpassed wild capture fisheries as the major source of fish production to the world in 2014. On one hand, aquaculture promises to fill the gap left by declining wild fisheries and to provide the world with a reliable, affor...

• Linkages Among Farmer Decision Making, Beneficial Bird Species, and Pest Management in Fruit-Growing Systems

  Published on September 25, 2015
  Understanding how ecosystems function and provide important services for humans is one of the great ecological challenges of the 21st century. This research examines how predator species contribute to reducing crop losses in agricultural ecosystems b...

• A Telecoupling Model to Account for Spatial Subsidies of Ecosystem Services Provided by Transboundary Migratory Species in North America

  Published on September 25, 2015
  Many migratory species provide benefits to humans, which are called ecosystem services. An example of an ecosystem service provided by a migratory species is the consumption of insect pests by bats, which minimizes crop damage and agricultural losses...

• Linking Land-Use Decision Making, Water Quality, and Lake Associations to Understand Human-Natural Feedbacks in Lake Catchments

  Published on September 24, 2015
  People around the world benefit greatly from the critical services provided by freshwater lakes, such as drinking water, recreation, and fisheries. However, human activities can contribute to pollution and the growth of harmful algal blooms that degr...

• The New 100th Meridian: Urban Water Resiliency in a Climatic and Demographic Hot Spot

  Published on September 23, 2015
  John Wesley Powell, famed American explorer and first U.S. Geological Survey director, popularized the 100th Meridian as the climatic boundary between the humid east and the semi-arid west - the geographic origin of the western United States. There i...

• Coastal Processes and Human Response to Shoreline Change

  Published on September 23, 2015
  Coastlines are influenced by a complex set of physical processes. In addition, human response to coastal change is a result of complicated and often interlocking decisions. This project will develop a set of integrated models to better understand the...

• The Coupled Dynamics of Human-Dryland River Systems: Linkages and Feedbacks Between Human and Environmental Drivers of Water Quality and Human Health

  Published on September 23, 2015
  A non-technical description of the project that explains its significance and importance