Doctoral Dissertation Research: Human Dimensions and Ecological Modeling of Mangrove Change in Florida

由于对湿地价值和利用存在多种不同的看法，湿地价值评估一直存在争议。这项研究的核心前提是，批判性的调查应该指向记录这些相互竞争的结构如何在法律和地理领域发挥作用。1996年颁布的《佛罗里达红树林保护法案》（MPA）是为了减少对这些有争议的沿海栖息地的改变和破坏。虽然执行MPA的最终责任在于佛罗里达州环境保护部（DEP），但监管地位已被授予一些规模较小的治理机构。在这些管辖范围内（地区、县和市），由于对红树林栖息地的预期用途的冲突，已经进行了许多尝试来改变海洋保护区。例如，在那不勒斯，发展利益集团和环保主义者都试图改写红树林法，并通过公民投票获得对那不勒斯“红树林空间”的地方控制权。本研究旨在记录国家不同地区如何在同一一般法律的指导下处理红树林管理问题。此外，它还记录了红树林栖息地的竞争性建设如何在1996年《红树林保护法》授予监管管辖权的机构中表现出来，以及这些机构如何反过来塑造红树林变化的空间和时间模式。该研究有三个具体目标：1)描述佛罗里达州红树林的历史分布特征；2)记录区域、县和市尺度上红树林保护的变异性；3)模拟未来红树林的分布。为此，将调用遥感、政策分析和马尔可夫模型的综合。在佛罗里达州，还没有对红树林资源进行空间和时间上一致的研究。利用主成分分析和频带比技术相结合的遥感变化探测将用于确定从1980年代中期至今红树林损失或增加的区域趋势。由于MPA的实施超越了变化检测的简单经验，开放式访谈和正式调查将在不同的治理尺度上进行。通过应用多维尺度和案例研究分析，访谈和调查数据将提供关于司法管辖区如何解释和制定MPA条款的更细致的特征。马尔可夫模型将根据从调查数据中勾画出的政策和看法，对红树林损失或增加的历史趋势进行加权，从而确定哪些司法管辖区最有可能在未来遭受红树林损失。通过管辖权权重的多重排列，将获得一系列红树林变化情景，每个情景都在MPA指定的代码范围内。本研究的结果为将定量和定性信息纳入空间明确的时间框架提供了模板。这些结果将首次呈现佛罗里达州红树林空间范围的历史一致性观点，其中包括个体行为者的作用和制度动态。这项研究对于人类与环境相互作用中更大的理论问题也很重要。它探索了评估模式和过程的多样性，这可能比对湿地的确切美元价值的争论提供更重要的见解。此外，该项目试图将构成人文地理学和自然地理学的同样重要但不同的思想脉络融合在一起。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

Wetland valuation is contested because of the coexistence of many diverse ideas about their value and use. This proposed research operates from the central premise that critical inquiry should be directed towards documenting how these competing constructions play out in legal and geographical realms. The Florida Mangrove Preservation Act (MPA) of 1996 was enacted as a means to lessen the alteration and destruction of these contested coastal habitats. Although ultimate responsibility for the enforcement of the MPA rests with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), regulatory status has been granted to some smaller scales of governance. Within these regulatory jurisdictions (regional, county, and municipal), numerous attempts have been made to alter the MPA as a result of conflict over the intended uses of mangrove habitats. In Naples, for example, development interests and environmentalists both attempted to rewrite the mangrove law and gain local control of Naples "mangrove space" through referendum. This study proposes to document how different areas of the state address mangrove management under the guidance of the same general law. Moreover it documents how competing constructions of mangrove habitat manifest themselves within the institutions granted regulatory jurisdiction under the Mangrove Protection Act of 1996, and how these institutions, in turn, shape the spatial and temporal patterns of mangrove alteration. The study has three specific objectives: 1) to characterize the historical distribution of mangroves in the state of Florida; 2) to document variability in the protection of mangroves at regional, county, and municipal scales; and 3) to model future mangrove distribution. To these ends, a synthesis of remote sensing, policy analysis, and Markovian modeling will be invoked. A spatially and temporally consistent study of mangrove inventory has not been conducted in Florida. Remote sensing change detection, utilizing a combination of principle components analysis and band ratio techniques, will be employed to identify regional trends in mangrove loss or gain from the mid 1980s until the present. Because enforcement of the MPA goes beyond the simple empirics of change detection, open-ended interviews and formal surveys will be administered at various scales of governance. Through the application of multidimensional scaling and case study analysis, interview and survey data will provide a more nuanced characterization as to how jurisdictions interpret and enact the provisions of the MPA. Markovian modeling will weight the historic trends in mangrove loss or gain according to policies and perceptions delineated from survey data so as to identify which jurisdictions are most likely to incur mangrove loss in the future. Through the multiple permutations of the jurisdictional weightings a range of mangrove alteration scenarios, each within the codes specified by the MPA, will be obtained. The results of this study provide a template for incorporating quantitative and qualitative information into a spatially explicit, temporal framework. These results will present the first historically consistent view of the spatial extent of mangroves in the state of Florida, one that incorporates the role of individual actors and institutional dynamics. The research is also of importance to larger theoretical issues embedded in the human-environment interaction It explores the diversity of valuation patterns and processes, which may afford more critical insight than debates over the exact dollar value of wetlands. Furthermore, this projects attempts to fuse together the equally important, but disparate veins of thought that constitute human and physical geography. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.