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

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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.