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

农业是人类对世界大部分陆地表面的主导影响，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不是自我调节和平衡的，而是严重依赖不可再生的投入。它们的相对简单性使农业生态系统比自然生态系统的营养保守性要低得多。此外，农业生态系统是全世界水生生态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复杂性在生物物理上往往较低，但当包括人类社会经济系统时，这些系统要复杂得多。归根结底，正是这种复杂的人类价值观、信仰和社会结构体系，包括经济学，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包括这些系统的人类层面和生物物理层面，才能取得成功。在过去三年中，一个由生态和社会科学家组成的多学科团队一直在开发农业生态系统恢复的框架和方法，将有效恢复俄亥俄州东北部糖溪流域的生态功能所需的自然资本和社会资本整合在一起。这项研究规划赠款的目标是：(1)对水源支流的社会、自然和生态特征进行基准，这些特征与了解受管理的陆地和水生系统之间的联系最直接相关；(2)提高对流域生态的认识，并鼓励农民和其他人使用改善水质的农业实践；(3)在包括农业和非农业区在内的整个景观的基础上，逐条支流恢复生物多样性和生态系统功能。规划过程将侧重于引入更多在关键领域具有专业知识的研究人员，开发必要的实验和数据集，以建立更全面的项目计划，并扩大教育组成部分，最终将学生参与项目并进一步将研究人员、农民和学生联系在学习过程中。增加主要水源流域从微生物到人类互动规模的生物复杂性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。只有将邻近农民之间的社会动力整合为一个共同体，才能改善陆地和水生系统之间的生态兼容性。从长远来看，调查人员希望通过常设监测站评估恢复和未恢复的源头对下游地区的影响。他们还希望使用这些现场实验的数据来模拟子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成为制定研究框架和团队建设努力的主要焦点。更长期的教育努力包括对中小学教师的培训。来自糖溪分水岭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野、农场和社区/次流域尺度的管理战略。该项目得到了2003财年环境中生物复杂性特别竞赛的一个奖项的支持，该竞赛的重点是耦合的自然和人类系统的动力学。

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.