ULTRA-Ex: Urban Development, Power Relations, and Water Redistribution as Drivers of Wetland Change in the Tampa Bay Region Socioecosystem

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。在美国，像坦帕这样的阳光地带城市正在迅速发展，但快速发展的城市消耗的自然资源比它们生产的还要多。 城市生态系统依赖于更大的农村地区资源的重新分配和集中，但对这种资源重新分配的影响因素和后果仍然知之甚少。 该研究项目将采用跨学科的方法来研究社会关系如何促进水从农村转移到城市地区，并将研究水再分配如何改变城市和更广泛的供水区域内的社会和生态系统。 该项目的重点是佛罗里达中西部的坦帕湾地区的社会生态系统，那里的水限制了城市的发展。 在这个地区，水从农村的地下水井转移到坦帕大都会。 沿着城市到农村走廊的湿地提供了监测反应系统，将监测地下水下降的影响和水重新分配可能造成的其他变化（如城市土地开发）。 该项目将有三个主要重点。 首先，调查人员将调查沿着城乡走廊的居民，以量化水文和湿地变化的感知、价值和意识方面的人口和地理差异。 其次，为了记录组织结构和公众反馈如何影响政策，调查人员将采访关键的信息提供者（资源管理者，决策者），并观察参与者在公共水政策会议上的互动。 第三，他们将使用地理信息系统来研究城市化如何改变湿地周围的景观，他们将与水公用事业和管理实体合作，分析湿地的水文，植物群落和有机物储存如何对水重新分配做出反应。反过来，人们也会感知这些环境变化，并围绕这些变化进行重组。 因此，人类文化和制度是社会生态系统的组成部分，其中社会和生物物理因素形成了复杂的相互作用网络。 该项目将通过阐明人类是否以及如何发展新的政策和行为来应对他们所造成的环境变化来推进社会生态理论。 该研究小组包括来自南佛罗里达大学五个学术单位和美国林务局的社会和自然科学家，正在开发综合社会和生态变化的模型。从这项研究中得出的原则可能有助于防止经常伴随着城市增长的“水战争”。 该奖项是由美国国家科学基金会和美国农业部林务局联合支持的一项特别竞赛的结果，作为城市长期研究领域探索（ULTRA-Ex）奖获得资助。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).More than one-half of the global human population now lives in cities. In the U.S., Sun Belt cities like Tampa are growing rapidly, but rapidly growing cities consume more natural resources than they produce. Urban ecosystems rely on the redistribution and concentration of resources from much larger rural areas, but the factors influencing and the consequences of this resource redistribution remain poorly understood. This research project will use an interdisciplinary approach to investigate how social relationships facilitate the transfer of water from a rural to an urban area, and it will examine how water redistribution modifies social and ecological systems within the city and in the broader water-providing region. The focus of this project is the socioecosystem of the Tampa Bay region in west-central Florida, where water limits urban development. Water is transferred in this region from rural groundwater wellfields to the Tampa metropolis. Wetlands along the urban-to-rural corridor provide sentinel response systems that will be monitored for the effects of groundwater drawdown and other changes (such as urban land development) made possible by water redistribution. This project will have three major emphases. First, the investigators will survey residents along the urban-rural corridor to quantify demographic and geographic variability in perceptions, values, and awareness of hydrological and wetland change. Second, in order to document how organizational structure and public feedback affect policy, the investigators will interview key informants (resource managers, policy makers) and will observe participant interactions at public water-policy meetings. Third, they will use geographic information systems to study how urbanization alters the landscape around wetlands, and they will partner with water utility and management entities to analyze how the hydrology, plant community, and organic matter storage of wetlands respond to water redistribution.Humans have long modified their environment through the pursuit of necessities and amenities. In turn, people perceive and reorganize around these environmental changes. Human culture and institutions thus are components of socioecosystems in which social and biophysical factors form a complex web of interactions. This project will advance socioecological theory by elucidating if and how humans develop new policies and behaviors in response to the very environmental changes that they cause. The research team includes social and natural scientists from five academic units at the University of South Florida and from the U.S. Forest Service, and it is developing models of integrated social and ecological change. The principles that emerge from this study are likely to help prevent "water wars" that often accompany urban growth. 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.