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

每年，世界各地的社会都需要更多的人均土地开发。 在美国，这种增长趋势在快速城市化地区尤其常见，这些地区将森林和农田转变为低密度建筑用地，损害了当地生态系统及其提供的资源的可持续性和恢复力。 曾经培育新兴城市经济的自然设施，例如清洁的水、肥沃的农田和肥沃的森林，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。 在大多数大都市区，这些影响正在加速，几乎没有迹象表明城市发展将迎来替代未来。 尽管剩余自然土地为社会提供了重要的服务，但令人惊讶的是，人们对人口快速增长地区影响森林和农场持续存在的复杂社会生态因素知之甚少。自然土地和开发土地是否有可能在快速增长的环境中共存，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。 该项目将重点关注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地区，位于“查兰塔”特大城市的中部，该特大城市是美国最大的特大城市之一。调查人员将构建并验证影响森林持久性和质量的社会和生态因素之间多层次相互依赖关系的背景框架。 他们将使用分层结构方程模型，并通过访谈、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基于代理的空间明确模型，该模型将根据地方、区域和国家尺度的政策、文化价值观和经济驱动因素的变化，探索城市增长的替代未来以及人与环境之间的动态相互作用。在快速城市化地区促进公共卫生和可持续发展的努力通常会因对影响自然景观持久性的复杂社会生态、多尺度且往往相互冲突的因素了解有限而受到阻碍。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）和结构理论（社会科学）与地理信息科学和可视化分析的技术进步相结合，为人类与自然系统耦合的新兴领域贡献理论和方法论的进步。 这一结构将在可测试的情境化框架中弥合与更高层次的制度进程、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结合将量化森林持续存在的人类和生态内在因素，而这些因素在自然资源和环境经济学中是众所周知难以估价的。 该项目将让多元化的社区参与合作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、结果解释和外展。这种方法将提高研究的智力价值，并扩大最终为区域规划者、保护从业者、土地管理者、政策制定者和相关公民提供的土地利用变化解决方案和观点的范围。 该项目将探索当自然土地的人类和生态内在价值得到更好理解时可能出现的市场和文化策略。 该奖项由城市长期研究领域探索奖 (ULTRA-Ex) 资助，是美国国家科学基金会和美国农业部林务局联合支持的特别竞赛的结果。

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.