ULTRA-Ex: Hierarchical Analysis of Socioecological Interactions in the Charlotte Metropolitan Region: Can Urbanization, Forest, and Working Lands Coexist?

ULTRA-Ex：夏洛特大都市区社会生态相互作用的层次分析：城市化、森林和工作用地能否共存？

• 批准号: 0949170
• 负责人: Ross Meentemeyer
• 金额: $ 28.6万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-15 至 2014-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0949170&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ULTRA; Ex; Hierarchical; Analysis; Socioecological

Each year societies worldwide are demanding more developed land on a per-capita basis. In the United States, this growing trend is especially common in rapidly urbanizing regions, where conversion of forests and farmlands to low-density built land uses has compromised the sustainability and resilience of local ecosystems and the resources they provide. The natural amenities that once fostered nascent urban economies, such as the availability of clean water, rich farmlands, and productive forests, are being exhausted by more than half of the world's population whose demands for these same essential resources must now be filled by costly surrogates. In most metropolitan regions, these effects are accelerating with little sign of embracing alternative futures for urban growth. Despite the vital services that remnant natural lands provide society, surprisingly little is known about the complex socioecological factors influencing the persistence of forests and farms in areas of rapid population growth. Is it possible for natural and developed lands to coexist in a setting of rapid growth, or are they mutually exclusive? This research project will examine the complex interactions between people and the environment to find ways that allow natural landscapes to remain functional in a rapidly urbanizing region. The project will focus on processes affecting the persistence of forest landscapes in Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte is a rapidly growing metropolitan region that sits in the middle of the "Charlanta" megalopolis, which is one of the largest mega-region in the U.S. The investigators will construct and validate a contextual framework of multilevel interdependencies between societal and ecological factors that influence persistence and quality of forest. They will use hierarchical structural equation modeling augmented by interviews, choice experiments, ecological measurement, visual analytics, and the use of geographic information systems and remotely sensed imagery. The project's empirical results will parameterize a spatially explicit agent-based model that will explores alternative futures of urban growth and dynamic interactions between people and environment based on changes in policy, cultural values, and economic drivers at local, regional, and national scales.Efforts to promote public health and sustainability in rapidly urbanizing regions are routinely impeded by limited understanding of the complex socioecological, multi-scalar, and often conflicting factors that influence persistence of natural landscapes. This research will contribute theoretical and methodological advances to the emerging field of coupled human and natural systems by building an interdisciplinary, policy-oriented analytical framework that combines hierarchy theory (ecology) and structuration theory (social science) with technological advancements in GIScience and visual analytics. This construct will bridge common analytical disconnects related to higher-level institutional processes, ecological heterogeneity, and micro-level consequences of human agency in a testable, contextualizing framework. The combination of hierarchical structural equation modeling, ecological measurement, and interactive survey response will quantify human and ecological intrinsic factors of forest persistence that are notoriously difficult to value in natural resource and environmental economics. The project will involve a diverse group of community engagement partners into all aspects of the research process, including study design, community relations, education, interpretation of results, and outreach. This approach will improve the intellectual merit of the research and widens the range of land-use change solutions and viewpoints ultimately available to regional planners, conservation practitioners, land managers, policy makers, and concerned citizens. The project will explore market and cultural strategies that are likely to emerge when human and ecological intrinsic values of natural lands are better understood. 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.

每年，全世界的社会都要求以人均开发的土地。 在美国，这种增长的趋势在迅速的城市化地区尤为普遍，在这种地区，将森林和农田转换为低密度建筑土地用途，损害了当地生态系统的可持续性和弹性及其提供的资源。 曾经促进了新生城市经济体的自然便利设施，例如清洁水，丰富的农田和生产森林的可用性，全球一半以上的人口已经用尽了这些相同基本资源的需求。 在大多数大都市地区，这些影响正在加速，几乎没有迹象表明城市增长的替代未来。 尽管重要的服务可以使自然土地提供社会，但令人惊讶的是，对影响人口迅速增长的森林和农场的持续存在的复杂社会生态因素知之甚少。自然和发达的土地是否有可能在快速增长的环境中共存，或者它们是互斥的？ 该研究项目将研究人们与环境之间的复杂相互作用，以找到使自然景观在快速城市化地区保持功能的方式。 该项目将集中于影响北卡罗来纳州夏洛特森林景观持续存在的过程。 夏洛特（Charlotte）是一个迅速发展的大都市地区，位于“夏尔兰塔”梅加波利斯（Megalopolis）中间，该地区是美国最大的大型地区之一，研究人员将建立和验证影响森林持久性和质量的森林质量和质量的社会相互依存的上下文框架。 他们将使用层次结构方程建模通过访谈，选择实验，生态测量，视觉分析以及地理信息系统的使用以及远程感知的图像的使用增强。 该项目的经验结果将参数化一个基于空间的基于代理的模型，该模型将基于政策，文化价值观和地方，地区和国家规模的变化，在人们和环境之间进行动态互动的替代未来，并在越来越多地促进公共健康和可持续性的情况下，越来越多地促进公共卫生和可持续性，这是由限制性地促进了越来越多的城市化因素，而越来越多的跨越了社会的影响。自然景观的持久性。这项研究将通过建立一个跨学科的，面向政策的分析框架，将层次理论（生态学）和结构理论（社会科学）与宗派和视觉分析中的技术进步结合在一起，从而为人类和自然系统的新兴领域做出理论和方法学的进步。 该结构将桥接与高级机构过程，生态异质性和人类代理的微观后果有关的共同分析断开连接。层次结构方程建模，生态测量和交互式调查响应的结合将量化森林持久性的人类和生态固有因素，这些因素在自然资源和环境经济学中很难重视。 该项目将涉及各种各样的社区参与伙伴参与研究过程的各个方面，包括研究设计，社区关系，教育，结果的解释和外展。这种方法将提高研究的智力优点，并扩大土地利用变更解决方案和观点的范围，最终可供区域规划人员，保护从业人员，土地管理者，政策制定者和相关公民提供。 该项目将探讨当人们更好地理解人类和生态的内在价值时，可能会出现的市场和文化策略。 由于国家科学基金会和美国农业森林服务部共同支持的特别竞争，该奖项是作为城市长期研究领域探索性（ULTRA-EX）奖的资助。