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

沿海地区的郊区化会产生严重的环境影响，如河口富营养化和贝类养殖场受损。郊区化还可能造成重大的社会混乱，因为现有人口(及其对社会和经济的贡献)被新的人口及其土地使用所取代。这一转变土地覆盖以支持城郊土地利用的过程是如此多维的，以至于很少有研究项目以整体的方式分析和建模这一过程。一个复杂的因素是人与环境相互作用的矛盾特征，因为环境进程伴随着促进独户、低密度开发、扩大负担得起的住房和保护地方感而展开。另一个复杂的因素是，单一类型的土地覆盖变化可能与各种土地用途有关。例如，由于两个低密度居民区的草坪覆盖率可能很高，但水肥施用量不同，这两个居民区将表现出不同的环境结果。对于将特定的郊区土地复盖与特定的土地使用联系起来，以及预测相关的社会和环境结果，很少有基于经验的解释。这项研究项目将在一个紧密耦合的分析框架内研究郊区化如何影响环境，研究社会、自然和地理信息科学的基础问题。马萨诸塞州东北部是研究这些动态的一个令人信服的天然实验室，因为波士顿大都市正在向这个沿海地区扩张。通过实地调查、统计和基于过程的建模收集的数据将用于描述、解释和模拟马萨诸塞州一个26个城镇的研究区郊区化的人-流域-河口耦合系统中的这些动态。调查人员将采用一套方法，如进行访谈、评估一次和二次统计数据、现场测量、进行现场实验、处理高分辨率卫星图像、建模和利用地理信息系统。该项目将产生一个综合的社会科学和生态科学分析，其中包括一个地理参照的土地利用/土地覆盖变化预测模型。该项目将为管理郊区化、水利用、氮循环、贝类生产力及其相互作用的过程提供新的见解。这些动态对海岸带管理者、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上，其中将包括对郊区化的空间和时间趋势及其三个后果的定量估计：地方感、用水以及废物和化肥管理。该项目还将对人类对这些后果可能作出的反应进行评估；在量化河道-泛滥平原连通性方面取得进展，以跟踪与人类活动有关的氮循环的变化；改进河口富营养化和贝类生产力的模型，以应对上游氮循环的变化。结合这些次级活动，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就耦合系统未来可能对持续的现状郊区化模式的脆弱性发表声明。这些产品都代表着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。总而言之，这些产品将有助于促进对人类-环境耦合脆弱性的基本理解，以应对多种相互作用的压力源的影响。研究人员将得出不仅学者感兴趣，而且郊区化社区也感兴趣的结果。结果将在项目结束后的利益攸关方专题讨论会上直接传达给相关政府和规划组织以及倡导团体。通过一个既定的计划，还将通过吸引科学记者来接触普通公众。学生将全面参与大学预科、本科生、研究生和博士后的学习。该项目由自然与人类系统相互作用的国家自然科学基金会竞赛所颁发的奖项支持。

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.