Confer:Earth Stewardship Initiative: A national network of ecologists develop research using designed experiments for Portland's Green Infrastructure Implementation and performance

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With population growth, rapid urbanization, and climate change threatening human and natural systems, it is imperative to better understand and shape cities. Practitioners shaping cities, including architects, landscape architects and urban designers, are increasingly building ecological landscapes. However, practitioners work with limited ecological data or precedents, since urban landscapes have rarely been planned to promote ecosystem functions and ecologists remain peripheral to the design process. To develop a collaboration between ecologists and city practitioners, we have developed the Earth Stewardship Initiative Demonstration Project (ESI). ESI is a dynamic framework for transdisciplinary collaboration to foster the integration of ecological research in designing and managing cities. The program serves as a training forum for ecologists and designers to work on real world projects through a collaborative framework. ESI illustrates by example how ecologists can shape urban ecosystems based on a proactive role in the design process using applied ecology. The program embeds ecologists and their research methods within a community-based planning project to co-investigate the role of ecology in shaping cities that work for people and ecosystems. Overall, ESI demonstrates how land planning projects can serve as models for actionable science in a forum where ?ecology for the city? is prioritized.This award will support the third Earth Stewardship Initiative (ESI) Demonstration Project at the Ecological Society of America?s 2017 annual meeting (August 6th ?11th) in Portland, Oregon. ESI solicits graduate student fellows from around the country to collaborate with city officials, practitioners, and ESA senior scientists on large-scale land planning projects. Participants collaborate in an urban design process to generate sustainable design strategies and propose ways of improving these projects through designed experiments and other adaptive management tools. Portland is a national leader in implementing green infrastructure (GI), and has established a city-wide green network drawing on considerable experience with GI design, implementation, monitoring, maintenance, and community engagement. Working with the City of Portland?s Bureau of Environmental Services, the team will evaluate Portland?s GI design and implementation practices. At the city scale, the team will assess a range of variables, including effects of GI on streamflow and water quality; the value of vegetation ? especially trees and plant health; and design and maintenance of lined bioretention basins. At a larger scale, the team will examine watershed health using the Portland Watershed Health Index, and identify opportunities for adaptive management and public communication of watershed health. After the meeting, the team will generate a white paper for future work including designed experiments and adaptive monitoring and management strategies.