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

巴尔的摩生态系统研究(BES)于1997年作为LTER项目启动，旨在了解城市生态系统结构和功能的控制和相互作用。该项目将继续这一长期的研究路线，并将其扩展到解决3个基本问题：1)城市地区社会经济、生态和自然特征的时空关系；2)城市地区能量、物质、资本和人口的流动，以及这些流动随时间的发展和关系；3)人们发展对大都市的了解并利用这种了解减少空气和水污染的方式。这项研究综合了生态学、水文学和社会学的观点和研究技术，以了解人类生态系统，并为城市生态系统及其周围环境的管理提供相关和有用的知识。该项目有助于了解大都市区的结构、功能和动态，并包括开发更好地了解社会生态和城市生态系统的一般技术。它汇集并整合了来自古生态、历史和当代时间框架的有价值的长期数据集。该项目对改善城市生态系统的管理作出了贡献，并侧重于减少环境污染和退化的技术，因此具有广泛的社会价值。其更广泛的价值还包括广泛的基于研究的培训、教育项目开发和公共推广项目。

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.