CAP3: Urban Sustainability in the Dynamic Environment of Central Arizona, USA

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For more than three decades, the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program has supported fundamental ecological research that requires long time periods and large spatial scales at a coordinated network of more than two dozen field sites. Since 1998, the LTER Program has supported two sites in urban settings to explicitly examine the interactions among human activities and ecological processes in metropolitan settings. This award provides renewed support for the Central Arizona Phoenix (CAP) long-term ecological research (LTER) project. CAP's central question is: How do the services provided by evolving urban ecosystems affect human outcomes and behavior, and how does human action (response) alter patterns of ecosystem structure and function and, ultimately, urban sustainability, in a dynamic environment? Working from a conceptual framework that links the social and ecological spheres of urban socioecological systems via ecosystem services, CAP will continue to build foundational databases of land-use and land-cover change, human attitudes, and human perceptions with respect to the environment; an extensive snapshot of ecological variables across the 6400-square km study area; household- and neighborhood-scale responses to experimental manipulation of residential landscapes; and demographic and economic variables. Based on these foundations, ongoing and new research will be conducted in four integrative project areas: (1) Climate, Ecosystems and People; (2) Water Dynamics in a Desert City; (3) Biogeochemical Patterns, Processes, and Human Outcomes; and (4) Human Decisions and Biodiversity. New activities will be undertaken both to synthesize more than 12 years of existing data and to work with other scientists, decision makers, and the public in collaboratively producing a vision for a sustainable future in central Arizona. In terms of intellectual merit, this project will enhance basic scientific understanding by developing and testing theories regarding socioecological systems in urban contexts, using a place-based, transdisciplinary approach. The project's long-term database will be further developed and used to test new hypotheses about ecosystem services in designed and highly modified urban environments. New work on land cover will include three distinct scales (parcel, metropolitan, regional "megapolitan"), adding object-based analysis of high-resolution imagery to address questions about ecosystem services associated with different land configurations (architectures), vegetationwaterheat interactions, and movement of water during storms. Water-related projects bring new hydrologic expertise and models to bear on questions of landscape redistribution of water and connectivity, ecosystem services, and virtual water. Biogeochemical research will continue to focus on altered cycles and will add analysis of persistent organic pollutants. A new perspective of "the urban food web" will organize biodiversity research, which continues to focus on mechanistic explanations for biodiversity change in the face of urbanization. Throughout much of its work, CAP will launch systematic treatments of tradeoffs among ecosystem services and between those services and human outcomes. With respect to broader impacts, this project will raise scientists' and decision makers' awareness of cities as socioecological platforms for solving sustainability challenges. It will integrate education and outreach at all levels, and it will continue to develop and maintain a comprehensive, long-term database of ecological and social variables for a rapidly changing system. CAP also will bring together researchers with community and governmental decision makers to develop strategies for developing a sustainable future in central Arizona and similar kinds of urban environments.