OPUS: MCS: The emergence of large-scale patterns of biodiversity from interactions between people, their yards, and urban wildlife

住宅院子和花园给城市居民的身心带来许多好处。它们也可能是城市野生动物特别重要的空间。总的来说，它们可以包含北美城市的大部分植被。城市花园是鸟类、蜜蜂和其他动物的重要栖息地。一些院子里长满了草皮，而另一些院子里则郁郁葱葱，种类繁多，有一层层的植被、开花植物和旨在吸引野生动物的特色。人们在院子里做出的选择可能会有很大的不同，但众所周知，人们？他们的选择受到邻居以及他们在社区看到的野生动物的影响。这项研究将使用建模方法来检查人们在他们的院子里做出的选择。它将研究这些选择对野生动物栖息地的影响，包括鸟类和蜜蜂的生物多样性。将开发一个模型来调查住宅庭院和花园的未来变化。该项目将提出关于如何让院子为鸟类和蜜蜂提供最大利益的建议。该模型还将用于教育学童、大学生和公众，让他们了解庭院和花园对生物多样性的重要性。人类、他们的院子和城市野生动物共同构成了一个复杂的、人与自然耦合的系统。这样的系统通常是非线性的，包含反馈和阈值，并且随着时间和空间从一种状态转移到另一种状态。由于时间滞后，这些动态的生态影响可能无法立即观察到或预测。本研究将使用过去十年在伊利诺伊州芝加哥都会区收集的经验数据来参数化基于主体的模型。该模型将考察居民影响下城市居住生态系统的时空动态。景观的选择。特别是，该模型将检查人们、他们的院子和城市野生动物之间的反馈。它将测试这样一种想法，即这些反馈可能会根据附近野生动物的丰富程度从积极到消极转变。该模型将用于探索比经验检验更大的空间和时间尺度上的模式。它将研究可能影响整个景观中鸟类和蜜蜂群落的各种情景的影响。因此，该模型将识别城市生物多样性中的新兴现象，这些现象是由个体主体之间的局部尺度相互作用造成的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Residential yards and gardens provide many physical and mental benefits to urban residents. They may also be particularly important spaces for urban wildlife. Collectively, they can contain most of the vegetation in North American cities. Urban gardens serve as vital habitat for birds, bees, and other animals. Some yards are dominated by turf grass while others are more lush and diverse, with layers of vegetation, flowering plants, and features intended to attract wildlife. The choices that people make in their yards can vary widely, but it is known that people?s choices are influenced by their neighbors as well as by the wildlife they see in their neighborhoods. This research will use a modeling approach to examine the choices that people make in their yards. It will study the consequences of these choices for wildlife habitat, including the biodiversity of birds and bees. A model will be developed to investigate future changes in residential yards and gardens. The project will make recommendations about how yards can provide the most benefit for birds and bees. The model will also be used to educate school children, college students, and the public about the importance of their yards and gardens for biodiversity. Together, humans, their yards, and urban wildlife form a complex, coupled human and natural system. Such systems are often nonlinear, contain feedbacks and thresholds, and shift from one state to another over time and across space. The ecological impacts of these dynamics may not be immediately observable or predictable because of time lags. This research will use empirical data gathered over the last ten years in the metro area of Chicago, Illinois to parameterize an agent-based model. The model will examine the spatio-temporal dynamics of an urban residential ecosystem under the influence of residents? landscaping choices. In particular, the model will examine feedbacks between people, their yards, and urban wildlife. It will test the idea that those feedbacks might switch from positive to negative depending on the abundance of wildlife in a neighborhood. The model will be used to explore patterns at larger spatial and temporal scales than can be examined empirically. It will examine the impacts of various scenarios that might affect bird and bee communities across the landscape. Thus, the model will identify emergent phenomena in urban biodiversity that result from local-scale interactions between individual agents.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.