Urban LTER: Human Settlements as Ecosystems: Metropolitan Baltimore from 1797 - 2100

9714835皮克特这个LTER项目在大都市巴尔的摩，马里兰州，将解决三个一般性的问题：1）如何在城市地区的社会经济，生态和物理因素的空间结构相互关联，以及它们如何随着时间的推移而变化？2)在城市系统中，能量、物质、资本和人口的流动是什么？它们如何随时间变化？3)人们如何发展和利用对大都会作为一个生态系统的理解来改善他们的环境质量？这些问题将在一系列尺度上得到解决，从单个补丁到整个主要统计都市区。通过这样做，该项目将有助于解决有关城市和郊区的生态和时间动态的基本问题，并量化最终成员生态系统，以与较少人为主导的生态系统进行比较。 该项目围绕一个综合框架，研究城市地区作为生态系统，包括物理，生态和社会经济组成部分。目标将是控制城市地区作为生态系统的功能及其对其他生态系统的影响的过程。将通过确定系统的社会经济、自然和生态组成部分是否具有共同的空间结构，以及每个组成部分是否对其他组成部分在空间和时间上的变化作出反应，来测试该框架。 研究计划包括描述性分析、历史分析和实验分析。主要斑块类型的特点是使用生态，物理和社会经济变量。这种方法将产生高分辨率，整个流域，整个城市的生态和社会经济通量的估计，以及允许开发的模拟模型，能够描绘土地利用，生境和社会变化对生态功能的相互影响。来自历史记录和沉积物花粉芯的数据将允许测试关于社会和生态因素如何相互作用以影响这些功能在过去如何变化以及它们在未来可能如何变化的假设。两个长期实验--一个是外来植物物种的操纵，另一个是社区恢复中基于生态的社会倡议--将测试系统中的人类和生态组成部分如何相互作用和变化。 对系统功能的研究将涉及地面/大气层能量交换、水文和营养物通量、大气沉积、原材料和加工材料、废物和资本的进出口。将考虑两个尺度-整个城市尺度和小流域尺度-部分是为了促进与自然和人类主导的生态系统的其他研究进行比较。 教育目标将提供有用的生态理解和数据访问的研究过程，并直接支持学生，教师，管理人员和公众。该项目将与现有的正规和非正规教育方案和机构建立密切联系，以建立提高学生、公民和决策者生态素养的方案。

9714835 Pickett This LTER project in metropolitan Baltimore, Maryland, will address three general questions: 1) How do the spatial structure of socio-economic, ecological, and physical factors in an urban area relate to one another, and how do they change through time? 2) What are the fluxes of energy, matter, capital, and population in urban systems, and how do they change over time? 3) How can people develop and use an understanding of the metropolis as an ecological system to improve the quality of their environment? These questions will be addressed at a range of scales, from individual patches up to the entire Primary Statistical Metropolitan Area. In so doing, this project will help resolve fundamental issues about the ecology and temporal dynamics of cities and suburbs, and quantify an end member ecosystem for comparison with less human-dominated ecosystems. The project revolves around an integrated framework to study urban areas as ecological systems, including physical, ecological, and socio-economic components. The target will be processes that control the function of urban areas as ecological systems, and their effects on other ecosystems. The framework will be tested by determining whether socio-economic, physical and ecological components of systems share common spatial structures, and whether each component responds to changes in others in space and time. The research plan includes descriptive, historical, and experimental analyses. Dominant patch types will be characterized using ecological, physical, and socio-economic variables. This approach will produce high resolution, whole watershed, and whole city estimates of ecological and socio-economic fluxes, as well as allow development of simulation models capable of depicting the interactive effects of land use, habitat and social change on ecological functions. Data from historical records and sediment pollen cores will allow testing of hypotheses about how social and ecological factors interact to affect how these function s have changed in the past and how they might change in the future. Two long-term experiments - a manipulation of exotic plant species and an ecologically-based social initiative in neighborhood restoration - will test how human and ecological components of the system interact and change. Research on system function will address surface/atmosphere energy exchange, hydrologic and nutrient flux, atmospheric deposition, and the import/export of raw and processed materials and waste products, and of capital. Two scales will be considered - the whole-city scale and the small-watershed scale - in part to foster comparison with other studies of natural and human-dominated ecosystems. The education objectives will provide useful ecological understandings and data access to the research process, and direct support to students, teachers, managers, and the general public. This project will build close linkages with existing formal and informal education programs and institutions to build programs that improve the ecological literacy of students, citizens, and decision makers.