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，全世界的社会都在人均基础上要求更多的开发土地。 在美国，这种增长趋势在快速城市化的地区尤为普遍，在这些地区，森林和农田转化为低密度的建筑用地，损害了当地生态系统及其提供的资源的可持续性和复原力。 曾经促进新生城市经济的自然便利设施，如清洁的水、肥沃的农田和多产的森林，正在被世界上一半以上的人口耗尽，他们对这些基本资源的需求现在必须由昂贵的替代品来满足。 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。 尽管残留的自然土地为社会提供了重要的服务，但令人惊讶的是，人们对影响人口快速增长地区森林和农场持续存在的复杂社会生态因素知之甚少。在快速增长的环境中，自然土地和已开发土地是否可能共存，还是相互排斥？ 该研究项目将研究人与环境之间复杂的相互作用，以找到使自然景观在快速城市化地区保持功能的方法。 该项目将侧重于影响北卡罗来纳州夏洛特森林景观持久性的过程。 夏洛特是一个快速发展的大都市区，坐落在“查兰塔”大都市，这是在美国最大的巨型区域之一，调查人员将构建和验证的社会和生态因素，影响森林的持久性和质量之间的多级相互依存关系的上下文框架。 他们将使用层次结构方程模型，通过访谈，选择实验，生态测量，视觉分析以及地理信息系统和遥感图像的使用来增强。 该项目的实证结果将参数化一个空间明确的基于代理的模型，将探讨城市增长的替代未来和人与环境之间的动态互动的基础上，在地方，区域和国家规模的政策，文化价值观和经济驱动力的变化。影响自然景观持久性的多尺度且往往相互冲突的因素。这项研究将通过建立一个跨学科的，以政策为导向的分析框架，将层次理论（生态学）和结构化理论（社会科学）与GIScience和可视化分析的技术进步相结合，为人类和自然系统耦合的新兴领域提供理论和方法上的进步。 这一结构将在一个可测试的、情境化的框架中，弥合与更高层次的制度过程、生态异质性和人类机构的微观后果相关的常见分析脱节。分层结构方程模型，生态测量和交互式调查响应的组合将量化森林持久性的人类和生态内在因素，这些因素在自然资源和环境经济学中是众所周知的难以估价的。 该项目将涉及一组不同的社区参与合作伙伴到研究过程的各个方面，包括研究设计，社区关系，教育，结果的解释和推广。这种方法将提高研究的知识价值，并扩大土地利用变化的解决方案和观点的范围，最终提供给区域规划者，保护从业人员，土地管理者，决策者和有关公民。 该项目将探讨在更好地了解自然土地的人文和生态内在价值时可能出现的市场和文化战略。 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。