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

由于湿地的价值和用途存在许多不同的观点，因此湿地价值的评估存在争议。这项拟议的研究工作的中心前提是，批判性调查应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》是为了减少这些有争议的沿海栖息地的改变和破坏。虽然执行《环境保护法》的最终责任在于佛罗里达州环境保护部(DEP)，但已将监管地位授予一些较小规模的治理机构。在这些监管管辖范围内(区域、县和市)，由于红树林栖息地的预期用途发生冲突，已经做出了许多尝试来改变MPA。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律，并通过全民公投获得那不勒斯“红树林空间”的地方控制权。这项研究建议记录国家不同地区如何在相同的一般法律指导下解决红树林管理问题。此外，它还记录了在根据1996年《红树林保护法》被授予监管管辖权的机构中，相互竞争的红树林栖息地建设是如何表现出来的，以及这些机构又是如何塑造红树林变化的空间和时间格局的。这项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；2)记录红树林保护在地区、县和市尺度上的变异性；3)模拟未来红树林的分布。为此，将综合运用遥感、政策分析和马尔科夫模型。佛罗里达州还没有对红树林种群进行空间和时间上的一致性研究。利用主成分分析和波段比技术相结合的遥感变化检测将被用来识别从1980年代中期到现在的红树林损失或增加的区域趋势。由于MPA的执行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，访谈和调查数据将对司法管辖区如何解释和颁布《最低成本法》的规定提供更微妙的描述。马尔科夫模型将根据调查数据描绘的政策和看法对红树林损失或收益的历史趋势进行权衡，以确定哪些司法管辖区未来最有可能遭受红树林损失。通过管辖权权重的多重排列，将获得一系列红树林改造方案，每一种方案都在MPA规定的代码范围内。这项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一个模板。这些结果将首次对佛罗里达州红树林的空间范围提出历史上一致的观点，这一观点结合了单个参与者的作用和机构动态。这项研究对于人与环境相互作用中更大的理论问题也很重要，它探索了价值模式和过程的多样性，这可能比关于湿地确切价值的争论提供更多的批判性见解。此外，该项目试图将构成人文地理和自然地理的同样重要但截然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.