ULTRA-Ex: Dynamics of Urban Ecosystem Services and Their Relationship to Ecohydrology in the Los Angeles Area

然而，人们对城市环境中生态系统服务的规模、模式和过程了解甚少，对它们的管理可能造成损害，导致其他环境问题或意想不到的社会经济影响。虽然城市森林和生态系统减轻了雨水流动，清除了污染物，并冷却了城市环境，但它们也有相关的成本，包括大量的用水需求。城市森林的创建、维持和保护都很复杂，植被的分布和相关利益的分布往往不均匀。随着水资源变得越来越稀缺，城市生态系统的这种分布将涉及更复杂的权衡。洛杉矶位于半干旱地区，广泛的发展通过大量使用灌溉创造了人工城市生态系统。面对当前的水资源短缺，决策者已经通过提高水费和限制住宅景观浇水来应对。预计的人口和城市增长以及未来的气候变化（气温升高和降水减少）给资源管理者带来了前所未有的挑战。需要更好的工具，使城市管理者能够平衡生态系统服务与与水和植被有关的损害之间的权衡。该合作研究项目将重点关注加州洛杉矶市与城市森林和户外景观相关的水管理和水消耗。调查人员将重点关注以下问题：(1)洛杉矶市水管理的制度框架是什么？(2)城市景观用水的规模和变异性是什么？(3)城市植被的空间分布是怎样的？它与景观用水和社会人口差异有何关系？(4)景观用水支持哪些生态系统服务？这些服务的一些潜在成本是什么？研究人员的目标是将生态水文学整合到更广泛的洛杉矶地区生态系统服务和危害的全面理解中，以及它们与机构管理和组织结构的人类维度的相互作用。他们将使用一系列的研究方法，结合不同的数据、模型、实验和理论方法来开发洛杉矶市生态水文的一阶模型。他们将尝试在这个高度复杂的城市环境的特定区域内近似室内和室外用水，他们将制定方案，以更好地了解机构水管理和用水的影响，包括整个城市的不同影响。该项目将解决在理解生态系统服务的成本和收益方面的关键不确定性，研究生物物理和人类制度层面以及生态系统服务、生态水文（生态系统和水文过程的耦合相互作用）和制度之间的相互作用。项目结果将传达给该地区致力于一系列生态系统活动的众多非营利机构，包括恢复当地河流流域和改善室内和室外用水。项目科学家将在年度公开研讨会上与处理流域健康和径流（与城市景观和用水密切相关）问题的非营利组织和其他团体合作。该项目还将支持本科生和研究生的跨学科教育，并将为与拟议项目相关的各个学科的博士后学者提供全面的指导。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。这一特殊奖项的资金由美国农业部林业局提供。

The magnitude, patterns, and processes of ecosystem services in the urban environment are poorly understood, however, and their management may create disservices that cause other environmental problems or unanticipated socioeconomic impacts. While urban forests and ecosystems mitigate stormwater flows, remove pollutants, and cool the urban environment, they also have associated costs, including extensive water requirements. Urban forests are complex to create, maintain, and protect, and the distribution of vegetation and associated benefits are often unevenly distributed. As water resources become scarcer, this distribution of urban ecosystems will involve even more complex trade-offs. Los Angeles is located in a semi-arid region, and widespread development has created an artificial urban ecosystem through extensive use of irrigation. In the face of current water shortages, decision-makers have responded by raising water rates and restricting residential landscape watering. Projected population and urban growth as well as future climate change (higher temperatures and lower precipitation) are creating unparalleled challenges for resource managers. Better tools are needed that allow urban managers to balance the trade-offs between ecosystem services and disservices associated with water and vegetation. This collaborative research project will focus on water management and water consumption associated with the urban forest and outdoor landscaping in the city of Los Angeles, California. The investigators will focus on the following questions: (1) What is the institutional framework for water management in the city of Los Angeles? (2) What is the magnitude and variability of landscape water use in the city? (3) What is the spatial distribution of urban vegetation, and how does it relate to landscape water use and to socio-demographic differences? (4) What ecosystem services are supported by landscape water use and what are some of the potential costs of such services? The investigators' goal is to integrate ecohydrology into a comprehensive understanding of ecosystem services and disservices, and their interactions with the human dimension of institutional management and organizational structure in the broader Los Angeles region. They will use a range of research methods combining a diverse set of data, models, and experimental and theoretical approaches to develop a first-order model of the ecohydrology of the city of Los Angeles. They will attempt to proximate indoor and outdoor water use within defined regions of this highly complex urban environment, and they will develop schemes for better understanding the effects of institutional water management and water use, including differential impacts across the city.This project will address critical uncertainties in the understanding of the costs and benefits of ecosystem services, examining both the biophysical and human institutional dimensions and the interactions between ecosystem services, ecohydrology (coupled interactions of ecosystems and hydrological processes), and institutions. Project findings will be conveyed to numerous non-profit agencies in the region devoted to a range of ecosystem activities, including restoring local river watersheds and improving indoor and outdoor water use. Project scientists will collaborate in annual public seminars with non-profits and other groups that are addressing watershed health and runoff (intimately related to urban landscaping and water consumption). The project also will support the interdisciplinary education of undergraduate and graduate students and will provide comprehensive mentoring for a postdoctoral scholar in the various disciplines associated with the proposed project. 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. Funds for this specific award were provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.