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，农业生态系统远远不能自我调节和平衡，严重依赖于不可再生的投入。 它们的相对简单性使得农业生态系统比自然生态系统的养分保守性低得多。 此外，农业生态系统是全世界水生系统营养负荷和随后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生态学上通常较低，但如果将人类社会经济系统包括在内，这些系统就复杂得多。 最终，正是这种人类价值观、信仰和社会结构（包括经济学）的复杂体系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在包括这些系统的人类和生物物理层面的情况下才能取得成功。 在过去的三年里，一个多学科的生态和社会科学家团队一直在开发一个框架和方法，农业生态系统恢复，整合了有效恢复生态功能的糖溪流域在东北部俄亥俄州的自然和社会资本。 这项研究规划补助金的目标是：（1）基准的社会，物理和生态特征的源头支流，最直接关系到了解管理的陆地和水生系统之间的联系;（2）提高对流域生态的认识，鼓励农民使用，并鼓励其他人使用改善水质的农业做法，（3）在分支流的基础上恢复农业区和非农业区的整个景观的生物多样性和生态系统功能。 规划过程将侧重于引进更多具有关键领域专业知识的调查人员，开发必要的实验和数据集，以便为更全面的项目制定计划，并扩大教育部分，最终将学生参与纳入项目，并进一步将研究人员，农民，在主要水源流域，从微生物到人类相互作用尺度的生物复杂性不断增加，这将增强农业生态系统的社会和经济可持续性，将减少农业对生态的影响。 只有将邻近农民的社会动态整合为一个社区，才能改善陆生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。 他们还希望利用这些现场实验的数据来模拟次流域和整个流域的影响。 通过本项目审查的项目将作为制定研究框架和团队建设工作的主要协调中心。较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关于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管理战略，在外地，农场和社区/子流域尺度。 该项目得到了2003财政年度环境中生物复杂性特别竞赛的资助，该竞赛侧重于自然和人类系统耦合的动力学。

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.