Baltimore Ecosystem Study Phase III: Adaptive Processes in the Baltimore Socio-Ecological System from the Sanitary to the Sustainable City

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The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) was initiated as an LTER project in 1997, designed to understand the controls and interactions of urban ecosystem structure and function. This project will continue that long-term line of research and will expand it to address 3 fundamental issues: 1) The spatial and temporal relationships of socio-economic, ecological, and physical features of an urban area; 2) The fluxes of energy, matter, capital, and population in an urban area, and the development and relationships of these over time; and, 3) The ways in which people develop an understanding of the metropolis and use such understanding to reduce air and water pollution. The research integrates ecological, hydrologic, and social perspectives and research techniques to understand the human ecosystem and provide knowledge of relevance and utility for management of urban ecosystems and their neighboring environments. This project contributes to understanding of the structure, function, and dynamics of a metropolitan area, and includes development of techniques for better understanding socio-ecological and urban ecosystems in general. It assembles and integrates valuable long-term data sets from paleoecological, historical, and contemporary time-frames. The project has broad societal value through its contributions to improved management of urban ecosystems and its focus on techniques for reducing environmental pollution and degradation. Its broader values also include extensive research-based training, educational program development, and public outreach programs.