Assessing and Explaining Consumer Landscape Practices: Towards an Ecology of the City

城市化地球仪的一些最重要的问题是现代城市居民在日常生活中造成的环境外部因素。 这些问题以极端复杂而著称，它们被聚合成更大的规模，但却是由个人的分散选择形成的。 而且，这些日常决定的平凡性使它们很容易被忽视，因此城市生态问题仍然没有得到充分的分析。 这类问题的一个典型案例，也是水污染的一个极其严重的非点源，是美国家庭在管理其财产时沉积的除草剂、杀虫剂和营养化学品。 在美国，这些化学品以每公顷相当于甚至超过现代农业的比例被应用于草坪。 尽管有环境意识和教育，但这种沉积继续增加。 本研究探讨了化学品的应用和管理的问题，使用密集和广泛的方法组成部分。 该研究将首先进行全国电话调查，使用在早期全州调查中预先测试的仪器，定量评估解释化学品使用变化的经济和人口因素。 这将伴随着一个密集的采访为基础的市政调查，评估房主的行为与环境美学，意识，意见和感情的关系。 本研究还将分析草坪化学工业，重点关注他们的营销实践，并对全国的草坪覆盖率进行评估。通过创建一个广泛而深入的研究协议来分析这一城市环境问题，该研究构成了城市生态学研究计划的基础。 它追求的解释不仅草坪化学的做法，但更普遍的是，为什么个人参与的活动具有深远的，如果看不见的，环境影响。 它质疑他们的逻辑背后的社会和经济驱动力，并试图将他们的行为与更大的环境变化模式联系起来。 因此，这项工作将有助于制定一个统一的人类/环境研究计划，将城市居民的行动与更广泛的全球变化模式联系起来。

Some of the most significant problems of an urbanizing globe are environmental externalities created by modern city dwellers in the course of their daily lives. These problems are notable for extreme complexity, being aggregated into larger scales but formed from the disaggregated choices of individuals. The very ordinariness of these daily decisions, moreover, makes them easy to overlook, so that problems in urban ecology remain under-analyzed. An exemplary case of such a problem, and an extremely serious non-point source of water pollution in its own right, is the deposition by American households of herbicidal, insecticidal, and nutrient chemicals in management of their property. These chemicals are applied to lawns in the United States at a rate per hectare that matches, and often exceeds, that of modern agriculture. Despite environmental awareness and education, such deposition continues to increase. This research examines the problem of chemical application and management using both intensive and extensive methodological components. The research will first conduct a national phone survey, using an instrument pre-tested in an earlier statewide survey, to quantitatively assess economic and demographic factors that explain variations in chemical use. This will be accompanied by an intensive interview-based municipal survey that evaluates the relationship of homeowner behaviors to environmental aesthetics, consciousness, opinions, and feelings. The research will also analyze the lawn chemical industry by focusing on their marketing practices and conduct an assessment of lawn cover nationally.By creating an extensive and intensive research protocol for analysis of this urban environmental problem, the research forms the foundations of a research program in urban ecology. It pursues an explanation not only of lawn chemical practices but more generally of why individuals participate in activities with far-reaching, if invisible, environmental impact. It queries what the driving social and economic forces are behind their logics and seeks to link their behaviors to larger patterns of environmental change. The work will therefore aid in formulation of a unified human/environment research program that connects the actions of city dwellers to broader patterns of global change.