ULTRA-Ex: Social-Ecological System Change, Vulnerability, and the Future of a Tropical City

从地方到全球范围，大城市对环境状况的影响都不成比例，因为为了支持大量人口和高生活水平，大城市必须进口大量的能源、食品和材料。城市也是人类在文化多样性、经济不平等、制度建设和政策形成方面的互动和创新的焦点。最近的预测表明，人口分布将更加城市化，人口将更加集中在城市。了解影响城市可持续性的条件对城市规划和运营非常重要，对城市所依赖的腹地和农村地区等其他景观的可持续性也很重要。城市居民需要能够识别和减轻任何可能威胁其城市持续性的新出现的脆弱性。波多黎各东北部的圣胡安大都市区是研究这些情况的理想地点。作为波多黎各的首都和岛上68%的人口的家园，圣胡安是加勒比地区最大的经济体之一，经常被视为加勒比或拉丁美洲其他经济体发展的典范。然而，普遍的城市发展以及对全球石油市场和气候变化潜在扰动的易感性，正在加剧与城市发展相关的持续社会和环境风险，包括森林覆盖减少、生物多样性变化、河流质量下降、洪水风险增加、污染暴露、获取当地自然资源的机会减少以及干旱。圣胡安利益相关者正在采取措施，通过社会组织和管理活动，如恢复溪流、建设城市花园、反对非法建筑项目和形成地下经济，以自下而上的方式应对产生风险的社会经济条件，防止进一步退化。尽管有这些趋势，但这些相互作用和应对措施在减少脆弱性和使圣胡安走向可持续性方面的影响是不确定的。本研究项目将分析圣胡安脆弱性的生物物理、经济和社会来源之间的相互作用，并评估它们对城市可持续发展潜力的影响程度。研究者将在城市社会生态系统理论的基础上构建一个智力框架；建立抽样、数据收集和实验的综合系统；基于可能的未来生物物理现实以及利益相关者的愿望/行动和政策目标，综合和模拟圣胡安社会生态系统的变化；实施利益相关者参与支持结构，建立参与研究和决策的能力和工具；通过学生和市民有效参与研究和城市治理，教育和增强他们的能力。本研究使用的方法包括实地观察、与利益相关者和公众的访谈和调查、统计工具、地理信息系统、环境监测、系统建模和模拟以及参与式研究方法。该研究项目将对城市可持续发展理论和城市社会生态系统理论和方法产生重大影响。理论框架将结合社会科学脆弱性理论；质量守恒和热力学等物理定律及其与发展和经济活动的关系；生态焦点解释了城市的生物多样性和生态系统对居民的作用。除了对城市的长期可持续性进行严格的综合和建模之外，该项目还将通过社会和生物物理科学家之间的变革性合作，以及在学科之间开发词汇来实现有效的综合，从而加强跨学科方法。该项目的拟议活动将影响圣胡安居民联系和规划其城市环境未来的方式，并将提供新的信息，以帮助更有效地管理热带城市。该项目还将制订新的办法，把一般城市地区的社会和生物物理研究结合起来。该项目将教育和培训下一代科学家，特别是妇女和少数民族，利用社会和生态科学在城市环境中的结合，代表在本世纪将面临重大社会生态挑战的城市。该奖项是由国家科学基金会和美国农业部林业局联合支持的一项特殊竞赛的结果，作为城市长期研究区域探索奖（ULTRA-Ex）的资助。

Large cities have a disproportionate influence on environmental conditions from local to global scales because to support large human populations and high living standards, they must import enormous quantities of energy, food, and materials. Cities are also the foci of human interactions and innovations concerning cultural diversity, economic inequality, institution building, and policy formation. Recent projections indicate that human populations will become more urban in distribution, with people becoming more concentrated in cities. Understanding the conditions that affect urban sustainability is important for city planning and operations and also important to the sustainability of other landscapes, such as hinterlands and rural areas, on which the city depends. Urbanites need to be in a position to identify and mitigate any emerging vulnerabilities that might threaten the persistence of their cities. An ideal place to study these conditions is the San Juan metropolitan area in northeastern Puerto Rico. As the capital of Puerto Rico and home of 68 percent of the island's population, San Juan has one of the largest economies in the Caribbean and is often seen as a model for the development of other Caribbean or Latin American economies. Pervasive urban development and susceptibility to potential perturbations of the global oil market and climate change, however, are exacerbating ongoing social and environmental risks associated with urban development, including the reduction of forest cover, biodiversity changes, diminishing stream quality, increasing risks to floods, exposure to pollution, decreased access to local natural resources, and droughts. San Juan stakeholders are taking measures to prevent further degradation through social organizing and stewardship activities, such as restoring streams, building city gardens, contesting illegal construction projects, and forming underground economies, in a bottom-up response to the socioeconomic conditions that generate risks. Despite these trends, the influence of these interactions and responses in reducing vulnerabilities and moving San Juan to sustainability is uncertain. This research project will analyze the interactions among the biophysical, economic, and social sources of vulnerability for San Juan and evaluate to what degree they influence the city's potential for sustainability. The investigators will develop an intellectual framework based on urban social-ecological systems theory; develop an integrated system of sampling, data collection, and experimentation; synthesize and model changes in the San Juan social ecological system based on probable future biophysical realities as well as the desires/actions of stakeholders and policy goals; implement a stakeholder participation support structure that builds the capacity and tools for engagement in research and decision-making; and educate and empower students and citizens through their effective participation in both research and city governance. The methods to be used in this study include field observations, interviews and survey with stakeholders and public in general, statistical tools, geographical information systems, environmental monitoring, systems modeling and simulation, and participatory research methods. This research project will have significant implications for urban sustainability theory in general and urban social-ecological systems theory and methodology specifically. The theoretical framework will combine social science vulnerability theory; physical laws like conservation of mass and thermodynamics and their relation to development and economic activity; and the ecological focus that explains the biodiversity of the city and the functioning of ecosystems to its inhabitants. In addition to the rigorous synthesis and modeling of cities' long-term sustainability, this project will enhance interdisciplinary methods through transformative collaboration between social and biophysical scientists, and development of a vocabulary among the disciplines to achieve an effective synthesis. The proposed activities of this project will affect the way San Juan inhabitants relate and plan the future of their urban environment, and they will provide new information to help manage tropical cities more effectively. The project also will develop new approaches for the integration of social and biophysical studies of urban areas in general. The project will educate and train the next generation of scientists, especially women and minorities, using the integration of social and ecological sciences in an urban setting representative of cities that will face substantial socio-ecological challenges during this century. This award was funded as an Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory (ULTRA-Ex) award as the result of a special competition jointly supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.