ULTRA-Ex: Collaborative Research: Land- and Water-Use Decision Making and Ecosystem Services Along a Southwestern Socioecological Gradient

世界各地城市人口和物质的迅速扩张增加了了解导致城市化的因素以及城市扩张对人类和环境的影响的紧迫性。目前对城市化作为一个耦合的社会生态系统的理解是有限的，因为对大都市地区提供的生态系统服务的类型、数量和质量，以及行为者如何将生态系统服务和家庭偏好的考虑纳入管理决策的了解不足。生态系统服务提供的服务和功能是可以科学衡量的，并源于对生态系统结构或过程的科学理解，例如从树冠覆盖处降温。生态系统偏好是衡量人们愿意为哪些生态系统服务付费的指标，例如靠近娱乐区或清洁空气。这些偏好往往体现在房价上。这一跨学科研究项目将调查决策者如何根据在干旱的西南部城市周围的荒地-农村-城市边缘地区测量的和优先的生态系统服务，对土地使用和水资源使用做出反应和决策。以新墨西哥州的拉斯克鲁塞斯和阿尔伯克基，以及亚利桑那州的凤凰城为例，采用比较、梯度的方法。通过研究干旱环境中人口、经济和自然梯度的三个城市，这个项目应该增加关于在资源稀缺环境下城市化进程的规模的基本知识。选择西南区域背景将更好地洞察沙漠城市的城市化进程，而沙漠城市的城市化进程在城市理论中没有得到充分的代表。主要方法包括利益相关者论坛和与决策者的焦点小组、房价和生态系统服务设施的享乐模型以及生态系统服务的生物物理模型。决策者在决策中在多大程度上考虑生态系统服务和偏好仍不清楚。在一个城市可持续发展对指导政策越来越重要的时代，这个项目将解决这一未被研究但至关重要的城市治理方面。该项目将向干旱城市化地区的从业者提供关于生态系统服务和偏好的新理解，他们可以利用这些理解来制定和促进最佳管理做法。拟议的访谈和利益相关者论坛将让决策者和公民团体就如何在快速增长的边缘地区管理土地和水发表意见。拟议的活动还将使研究团队能够评估哪些生态系统服务和偏好对利益攸关方重要，以便未来的研究可以解决这些问题。活动和成果将传达到市、县、州和联邦各级的决策者以及相关的公民团体、房地产开发商和部落团体。该奖项是由美国国家科学基金会和美国农业部林业局联合支持的一项特别竞赛的结果，作为城市长期研究区域探索(ULTRA-EX)奖的资助。

Rapid population and physical expansion of cities worldwide has increased the urgency for understanding the factors that result in urbanization and the consequences of urban expansion for human beings and the environment. Present understanding of urbanization as a coupled socioecological system is limited by inadequate knowledge of the type, quantity, and quality of ecosystem services delivered in metropolitan regions and how actors incorporate both considerations of ecosystem services and household preferences into management decisions. Ecosystem services provide a service and function that is scientifically measureable and derived from a scientific understanding of ecosystem structures or processes, such as cooling from tree canopy cover. Ecosystem preferences are measurements of what ecosystem services people are willing to pay for, such as being close to recreation areas or clean air. These preferences often are revealed in housing prices. This interdisciplinary research project will investigate how decision makers respond to and make land-use and water-use decisions based on measured and preferred ecosystem services on the wildland-rural-urban fringe surrounding urban areas in the arid southwest. A comparative, gradient approach using the metropolitan areas of Las Cruces and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Phoenix, Arizona, as case studies will be employed. By examining three cities along population, economic, and physical gradients in an arid environment, this project should add to basic knowledge about scaling in the urbanization process in a resource scarce environment. Choosing a southwestern regional context will provide greater insight into the urbanization processes in desert cities, which are underrepresented in urban theory. Primary methods include stakeholder forums and focus groups with decision makers, hedonic modeling of houses prices and ecosystem service amenities, and biophysical modeling of ecosystem services.The degree to which decision makers consider ecosystem services and preferences in their decisions remains unclear. In an era when urban sustainability is increasingly important for guiding policy, this project will address this understudied but critical aspect of urban governance. The project will provide new understanding about ecosystem services and preferences to practitioners in arid urbanizing regions, which they can use to formulate and facilitate best management practices. Proposed interviews and stakeholder forums will give decision makers and citizen groups a voice in how land and water should be managed on the rapidly growing fringe. The proposed activities also will allow the research team to assess which ecosystem services and preferences are important to stakeholders, so that future research can address those concerns. The activities and results will reach decision makers at the city, county, state, and federal levels as well as concerned citizen groups, real estate developers, and tribal groups. 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.