Doctoral Dissertation Research: Human Dimensions and Ecological Modeling of Mangrove Change in Florida

湿地价值评估是有争议的，因为许多不同的想法共存的价值和使用。 这项研究的核心前提是，批判性的调查应该是针对记录这些竞争性的建设如何发挥在法律的和地理领域。 1996年颁布的《佛罗里达红树林保护法》是为了减少对这些有争议的沿海生境的改变和破坏。 虽然执行MPA的最终责任在于佛罗里达环境保护部（DEP），但监管地位已授予一些较小规模的治理。 在这些监管管辖范围内（地区，县和市），由于红树林栖息地的预期用途发生冲突，已经做出了许多尝试来改变MPA。 例如，在那不勒斯，发展利益集团和环保主义者都试图改写红树林法，并通过全民公决获得那不勒斯“红树林空间”的地方控制权。 本研究旨在记录国家不同地区如何在同一一般法律的指导下解决红树林管理问题。 此外，它的文件如何竞争建设的红树林栖息地表现出自己的机构内授予监管管辖权的红树林保护法1996年，以及这些机构，反过来，如何塑造的空间和时间模式的红树林改变。这项研究有三个具体目标：1）描述佛罗里达州红树林的历史分布; 2）记录区域、县和市范围内红树林保护的变化; 3）模拟未来的红树林分布。 为此，遥感，政策分析和马尔可夫模型的合成将被调用。 佛罗里达的红树林库存的时空一致性研究尚未进行。 将采用遥感变化探测，利用主成分分析和波段比技术相结合的方法，查明从1980年代中期至今红树林减少或增加的区域趋势。 由于MPA的执行超出了简单的变化检测，开放式访谈和正式调查将在不同规模的治理管理。 通过应用多维尺度和案例研究分析，访谈和调查数据将提供一个更微妙的特点，如何司法解释和颁布的MPA的规定。马尔可夫模型将根据调查数据中描述的政策和看法，对红树林损失或增加的历史趋势进行加权，以确定哪些管辖区最有可能在未来遭受红树林损失。通过对管辖权权重的多重排列，将获得一系列红树林变更情况，每种情况均在MPA规定的代码范围内。本研究的结果提供了一个模板，可将定量和定性信息纳入空间明确的时间框架中。 这些结果将呈现出第一个历史上一致的看法，红树林的空间范围在佛罗里达州，一个结合了个人行为者和机构动态的作用。 该研究对人与环境相互作用中更大的理论问题也具有重要意义 它探讨了估值模式和过程的多样性，这可能比关于湿地确切美元价值的辩论提供更重要的见解。 此外，这个项目试图融合在一起，同样重要的，但不同的思路，构成人文地理和自然地理。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。

Wetland valuation is contested because of the coexistence of many diverse ideas about their value and use. This proposed research operates from the central premise that critical inquiry should be directed towards documenting how these competing constructions play out in legal and geographical realms. The Florida Mangrove Preservation Act (MPA) of 1996 was enacted as a means to lessen the alteration and destruction of these contested coastal habitats. Although ultimate responsibility for the enforcement of the MPA rests with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), regulatory status has been granted to some smaller scales of governance. Within these regulatory jurisdictions (regional, county, and municipal), numerous attempts have been made to alter the MPA as a result of conflict over the intended uses of mangrove habitats. In Naples, for example, development interests and environmentalists both attempted to rewrite the mangrove law and gain local control of Naples "mangrove space" through referendum. This study proposes to document how different areas of the state address mangrove management under the guidance of the same general law. Moreover it documents how competing constructions of mangrove habitat manifest themselves within the institutions granted regulatory jurisdiction under the Mangrove Protection Act of 1996, and how these institutions, in turn, shape the spatial and temporal patterns of mangrove alteration. The study has three specific objectives: 1) to characterize the historical distribution of mangroves in the state of Florida; 2) to document variability in the protection of mangroves at regional, county, and municipal scales; and 3) to model future mangrove distribution. To these ends, a synthesis of remote sensing, policy analysis, and Markovian modeling will be invoked. A spatially and temporally consistent study of mangrove inventory has not been conducted in Florida. Remote sensing change detection, utilizing a combination of principle components analysis and band ratio techniques, will be employed to identify regional trends in mangrove loss or gain from the mid 1980s until the present. Because enforcement of the MPA goes beyond the simple empirics of change detection, open-ended interviews and formal surveys will be administered at various scales of governance. Through the application of multidimensional scaling and case study analysis, interview and survey data will provide a more nuanced characterization as to how jurisdictions interpret and enact the provisions of the MPA. Markovian modeling will weight the historic trends in mangrove loss or gain according to policies and perceptions delineated from survey data so as to identify which jurisdictions are most likely to incur mangrove loss in the future. Through the multiple permutations of the jurisdictional weightings a range of mangrove alteration scenarios, each within the codes specified by the MPA, will be obtained. The results of this study provide a template for incorporating quantitative and qualitative information into a spatially explicit, temporal framework. These results will present the first historically consistent view of the spatial extent of mangroves in the state of Florida, one that incorporates the role of individual actors and institutional dynamics. The research is also of importance to larger theoretical issues embedded in the human-environment interaction It explores the diversity of valuation patterns and processes, which may afford more critical insight than debates over the exact dollar value of wetlands. Furthermore, this projects attempts to fuse together the equally important, but disparate veins of thought that constitute human and physical geography. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.