BE/CNH: Impact of Economics-Driven Land-Use Decisions on Watershed Health

农业是人类对世界上大部分陆地表面的主要影响，包括美国近100万平方英里的土地。农业极大地改变了陆地和水生生态系统的结构和功能，因此农业生态系统远非自我调节和平衡，而是严重依赖不可再生的投入。它们的相对简单性使得农业生态系统比自然生态系统更不保守。此外，农业生态系统是全球水生系统养分负荷和生物多样性丧失的主要来源。虽然农业生态系统的生物物理复杂性往往较低，但如果包括人类社会经济系统，这些系统就复杂得多。最终，是人类价值观、信仰和社会结构（包括经济）组成的复杂系统决定了农业生态系统的生态结构和功能。恢复农业景观生态功能的努力只有同时考虑到这些系统的人文和生物物理层面，才能取得成功。在过去的三年里，一个由生态和社会科学家组成的多学科团队一直在开发一个农业生态系统恢复的框架和方法，该框架和方法整合了有效恢复俄亥俄州东北部糖溪流域生态功能所需的自然和社会资本。这项研究计划拨款的目标是：(1)对源头支流的社会、物理和生态特征进行基准测试，这些特征与理解受管理的陆地系统和水生系统之间的联系最直接相关；(2)提高对流域生态学的认识，并鼓励农民和其他人采用改善水质的农业做法；(3)在包括农业和非农业地区在内的整个景观的支流基础上恢复生物多样性和生态系统功能。计划过程将侧重于引进在关键领域具有专业知识的额外研究人员，开发必要的实验和数据集，以便为更全面的项目制定计划，并扩大教育组成部分，最终将学生参与到项目中，并进一步将研究人员、农民和学生联系在一起。主要水源流域从微生物到人类相互作用尺度的生物复杂性的增加将增强农业生态系统的社会和经济可持续性，并将减少农业的生态影响。只有将邻近的农民之间的社会动态整合为一个社区，才能改善陆地和水生系统之间的生态兼容性。从长远来看，调查人员希望通过永久性监测站来评估修复和未修复的源头对下游地区的影响。他们还希望利用这些现场实验的数据来模拟次流域和整个流域水平的影响。通过该项目审查的修复工作将作为发展研究框架和团队建设工作的主要焦点。长期的教育工作包括培训小学和中学教师。来自糖溪流域的农民将向学校和其他非专业观众介绍农业及其恢复工作的案例研究。未来的重点将是利用生态过程作为田间、农场和社区/次流域尺度的管理策略。该项目获得了2003年度环境生物复杂性特别竞赛奖项的支持，该竞赛侧重于自然和人类系统耦合动力学。

Agriculture is the dominant human influence over most of the world's land surface, including nearly a million square miles in the U.S. Agriculture has changed the structure and function of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems dramatically, so that far from being self-regulating and in equilibrium, agroecosystems depend heavily on non-renewable inputs. Their comparative simplicity makes agroecosystems much less nutrient conservative than their natural counterparts. Furthermore, agroecosystems are a major source of nutrient loading and subsequent loss of biodiversity to aquatic systems worldwide. While complexity in agroecosystems often is low biophysically, these systems are much more complex when the human socio-economic systems are included. Ultimately it is this complex system of human values, beliefs, and social constructs, including economics, that determine the ecological structure and function of agroecosystems. Efforts to restore ecological function to agricultural landscapes will be successful only if they include both the human and biophysical dimensions of these systems. During the past three years, a multidisciplinary team of ecological and social scientists has been developing a framework and approach to agroecosystem restoration that integrates both natural and social capital required for effective restoration of ecological function to the Sugar Creek Watershed in northeast Ohio. The objectives of this research planning grant are: (1) to benchmark the social, physical, and ecological features of the headwater tributaries that most directly relate to understanding the linkages between managed terrestrial and aquatic systems; (2) to create increased awareness of watershed ecology, and motivate farmers to use, and others to encourage the use of agricultural practices that improve water quality, and (3) to restore biodiversity and ecosystem function on a tributary by tributary basis of whole landscapes including both agricultural and non-agricultural areas. The planning process will focus on bringing in additional investigators with expertise in key areas, developing the necessary experiments and data sets on which to build plans for a fuller project, and expanding an education component that ultimately will integrate student participation into the project and further link researchers, farmers, and students in a learning process.Increasing biocomplexity from microbial to human interaction scales in primary headwater watersheds will enhance the social and economic sustainability of agroecosystems and will decrease agriculture's ecological impact. Only by integrating the social dynamics among neighboring farmers as a community will the ecological compatibility between terrestrial and aquatic systems be improved. In the long-term, the investigators expect to evaluate the impact of restored and unrestored headwaters on downstream areas through permanent monitoring stations. They also expect to use the data from these on-site experiments to model impacts at sub-basin and overall watershed levels. The restorations examined through this project will serve as a primary focal point for developing the research framework and team-building efforts. Longer-term educational efforts include training for elementary and secondary school teachers. Farmers from the Sugar Creek watershed will present case studies on agriculture and their restoration efforts to school and other lay audiences. Future emphasis will be on using ecological processes as management strategies at field, farm, and community/subwatershed scales. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2003 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.