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

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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.