CNH: Suburbanization, Water Use, Nitrogen Cycling, and Eutrophication in the 21st Century: Interactions, Feedbacks, and Uncertainties in a Massachusetts Coastal Zone

沿海地区的郊区化可产生严重的环境影响，如河口富营养化和贝类养殖场受损。 郊区化还可能造成严重的社会混乱，因为原有人口（及其对社会和经济的贡献）被新人口及其土地使用所取代。 这种转变土地覆被以支持郊区土地利用的过程是如此多维，以至于很少有研究项目以整体的方式分析和模拟这一过程。 一个复杂的因素是人与环境相互作用的冲突性，因为环境进程与促进单户低密度发展，扩大负担得起的住房和保护地方感一起展开。 另一个复杂的因素是，单一类型的土地覆被变化可能与各种土地用途有关。 例如，由于两个低密度住宅区可能表现出高比例的草坪覆盖，但具有不同的水和肥料施用率;这两个社区将表现出不同的环境结果。 有几个经验为基础的解释联系具体的郊区土地覆盖与特定的土地利用，并预测相关的社会和环境的结果。 该研究项目将研究郊区化如何在紧密耦合的分析框架内影响环境，研究社会，自然和地理信息科学的基本问题。 马萨诸塞州东北部是研究这些动态的一个引人注目的自然实验室，因为大都市波士顿正在向这个沿海地区蔓延。 通过实地调查和统计和基于过程的建模收集的数据将被用来表征，解释和模拟这些动态在郊区化耦合人类流域河口系统在一个26镇马萨诸塞州研究区。 调查人员将采用一套方法，如进行访谈，评估初级和二级统计数据，进行现场测量，进行实地实验，处理高分辨率卫星图像，建模和利用地理信息系统。 该项目将结合地理参考的土地利用/土地覆盖变化预测模型，进行综合社会和生态科学分析，并将为控制郊区化、水资源利用、氮循环、贝类生产力及其相互作用的过程提供新的见解。 这些动态对沿海地区管理者、土地所有者和水资源管理者构成了一个紧迫的全国性问题。 这项研究的意义体现在其产品，其中将包括一套定量估计的空间和时间的郊区化趋势，并在其三个后果：地方感，用水，废物和肥料管理。 该项目还将评估人类对这些后果的可能反应;在量化河道-洪泛区连通性方面取得进展，以跟踪与人类活动相关的氮循环变化;改进河口富营养化和贝类生产力的建模，以应对氮循环的上游变化。 将这些子活动综合起来，将产生一套经过地理参考和验证的未来土地利用和土地覆盖情景，从而使调查人员能够说明耦合系统未来可能对持续的郊区化现状模式的脆弱性。 这些产品都代表了对土地利用和土地覆盖变化、水生生态系统生态学和地理信息科学领域的新贡献。 总之，这些产品将有助于推进对人类-环境耦合脆弱性的基本理解，以应对多种相互作用的压力因素的影响。 研究人员将得出不仅学者感兴趣，而且郊区化社区感兴趣的结果。 将在项目结束后举行的利益攸关方专题讨论会上，将结果直接传达给有关政府和规划组织以及宣传团体。 公众也将通过一个既定的计划与科学记者接触。 学生将在大学预科，本科，研究生和博士后水平的整体参与。 该项目得到了NSF竞赛的一个奖项的支持，该奖项侧重于耦合自然和人类系统的动力学。

Suburbanization in coastal zones can generate severe environmental impacts, such as estuarine eutrophication and the impairment of shellfish beds. Suburbanization can also produce substantial social disruptions, as established populations (and their contributions to society and the economy) are replaced by new populations and their land uses. This process of transforming land cover to support suburban land uses is so multi-dimensional that few research projects have analyzed and modeled the process in a holistic manner. One complicating factor is the conflicting character of human-environment interactions, as environmental processes unfold alongside the promotion of single-family, low-density development, the expansion of affordable housing, and the preservation of a sense of place. Another complicating factor is that a single type of land-cover transformation can be associated with various land uses. For example, because two low-density residential areas may exhibit a high proportion of lawn cover but with different water and fertilizer application rates; the two neighborhoods will exhibit different environmental outcomes. There are few empirically based explanations for linking specific suburban land covers with specific land uses and for predicting the associated social and environmental outcomes. This research project will examine how suburbanization affects the environment within a tightly coupled analytical framework, examining questions fundamental to social, natural, and geographic information sciences. Northeastern Massachusetts is a compelling natural laboratory for examining these dynamics, because metropolitan Boston is sprawling into this coastal area. Data gathered through fieldwork and statistical and process-based modeling will be used to characterize, explain, and model these dynamics in a suburbanizing coupled human-watershed-estuary system in a 26-town Massachusetts study area. The investigators will employ a suite of methods, such as conducting interviews, evaluating primary and secondary statistical data, taking in situ measurements, conducting field experiments, processing high resolution satellite imagery, modeling, and utilizing geographic information systems. The project will produce an integrated social and ecological science analysis incorporating a georeferenced land-use/land-cover change projection model.This project will provide new insights into the processes that govern suburbanization, water use, nitrogen cycling, shellfish productivity, and their interactions. These dynamics constitute a pressing national problem for coastal zone managers, land owners and water managers. The significance of this research is manifest by its products, which will include a set of quantitative estimates of spatial and temporal trends in suburbanization and in three of its consequences: sense of place, water use, and waste and fertilizer management. The project also will result in an assessment of likely human responses to these consequences; advances in quantifying river channel-floodplain connectivity to track changes in nitrogen cycling associated with human activities; and improved modeling of estuarine eutrophication and shellfish productivity in response to upstream changes in nitrogen cycling. Integrating across these subactivities, a set of georeferenced and validated scenarios of future land use and land cover will be generated, thereby enabling the investigators to make statements about the likely future vulnerability of the coupled system to continued status quo suburbanization patterns. These products each represent new contributions to the fields of land-use and land-cover change, aquatic ecosystem ecology, and geographic information science. Together, these products will help advance basic understanding of coupled human-environment vulnerabilities to the effects of multiple, interacting stressors. The researchers will produce results that interest not only scholars but also suburbanizing communities. Results will be conveyed directly to relevant government and planning organizations and advocacy groups in an end-of-project stakeholder symposium. The general public will also be reached by engaging science journalists through an established program. Students will be integrally involved at the pre-college, undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral levels. This project is supported by an award resulting from the NSF competition focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.