The Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program at the U.S. National Science Foundation: lessons learned in interdisciplinary funding program development and management

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2016.02.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The CNH solicitation has been highly consistent since the program began.

  • Competition managers and review panelists must work together like researchers.

  • CNH management challenges require special attention to communication.

  • Effective proposal review requires additional work to inform panelists.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has conducted a Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems competition since 2001 to support research that examines processes functioning within relevant natural systems and human systems as well as the ways that natural system processes affect human systems and human systems affect natural system dynamics. Among keys to this program's success have been its provision of a stable target for researchers while remaining open to new approaches and ideas, and its attention to challenges associated with its distinctive position in the NSF administrative structure.

Section snippets

Historical context

What became the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) competition emerged from a complex mix of factors ranging from the global to the personal in scale. During the 1990s, new interdisciplinary activities designed to address major environmental issues flourished. Within the United States, a multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) had been established to coordinate activities across government agencies and with research programs in other nations. The World

Establishment of CNH as a special competition

The opportunity to take advantage of an increasingly active community and identification of exciting new research directions presented itself in the wake of the 1999 announcement by NSF Director Rita Colwell that NSF's next major environmental initiative would emphasize biocomplexity, which focused on properties emerging from the interplay of behavioral, biological, chemical, physical, and social interactions that affect, sustain, or are modified by living organisms, including humans [7].

Continuation of CNH as a standing program

As the Biocomplexity in the Environment initiative wound down after 2005, four of the five special competitions ended, purportedly because the activities that were supported through the special competitions had been incorporated into the standing programs of NSF and/or other new competitions served the same communities. The CNH program directors argued, however, that the larger-scale, explicitly interdisciplinary research and related activities supported by CNH would not continue to be

Factors contributing to CNH persistence

In the 15 years since the first Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems competition, 14 competitions were held. The program's original goal of providing long-term support for interdisciplinary research that examines the complex interactions within and among natural and human systems has been met. Other observers need to provide objective assessments of the program's strengths and weaknesses, but for the authors of this article, all of whom have served as CNH program officers, the

Ongoing issues confronting CNH

Despite many noteworthy accomplishments by CNH-supported researchers and consistently strong support from directorate and division leaders in relevant parts of NSF, a number of issues have required frequent attention to enable ongoing conduct of the program.

  • CNH's ongoing status as a standing multi-directorate program. Although joint support from the biological sciences, geosciences, and social and behavioral science directorates has been critical to the success of CNH, especially since 2007,

Lessons learned from 15 years of CNH experience

In conclusion, while the overall experience of CNH has been positive, a number of critical lessons have been learned that apply not only to CNH but to other efforts to provide long-term support for interdisciplinary research examining interactions among people and the natural environment they inhabit.

  • Much of CNH's success may relate to its status as the hybrid product of top-down interests reflected in the NSF-wide biocomplexity and sustainability initiatives and bottom-up activities based on

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

  • • of special interest

  • •• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

Thomas J. Baerwald and Sarah L. Ruth are current employees of the National Science Foundation. Baerwald is a senior science advisor in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. Ruth is a section head in the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences in the Directorate for Geosciences. Penelope L. Firth recently retired from NSF, where she last served as division director of the Division of Environmental Biology in the

References (9)

  • P. Firth et al.

    Water and watersheds research: discovery and broader impacts

    J Contemporary Water Res Educ

    (2007)
  • National Science Foundation (NSF)

    NSF/EPA Partnership for Environmental Research. Interagency Announcement of Opportunity

    (1996)
  • U.S. EPA National Center for Environmental Research

    Managing Interdisciplinary Research: Lessons Learned. Workshop Summary. EPA STAR. Water and Watersheds Research Program

    (2001)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (12)

  • Human ecodynamics: A perspective for the study of long-term change in socioecological systems

    2019, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
    Citation Excerpt :

    A number of subsequent papers and projects adopted the human ecodynamics label. Many were funded under the U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) ‘Coupled Natural and Human Systems’ program (CNH, initially a subprogram of the ‘Biocomplexity in the Environment’ initiative; Baerwald et al., 2016). Many of these projects were developed to synthesize decades of archaeological and ecological research in targeted landscapes and emphasized the integrated modeling of human and natural system co-evolution.

  • Socio-Environmental Systems (SES) Research: What have we learned and how can we use this information in future research programs

    2016, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
    Citation Excerpt :

    Assessment, evaluation, and adjustment to changing conditions, as noted in Challenge 1, may often require the continuous or periodic presence of researchers for considerably longer periods than the conventional three to five years of many sponsored projects. Programs and projects have tackled this challenge in a variety of ways but usually involve long-term commitment by key project personnel [7,10,24,25,41]. In the long run, capacity building of on-site civil society or community organizations to participate actively in monitoring aspects of environmental change can simplify these challenges [22].

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text