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

巴尔的摩生态系统研究（BES）是1997年启动的一个LTER项目，旨在了解对城市系统结构和功能的控制，以及城市生态系统的结构和功能如何相互影响。 拟议的研究将通过解决三个基本问题来扩大BES第一阶段的工作：1）城市地区的社会经济、生态和物理特征的空间结构如何相互关联，以及它们如何随着时间的推移而变化？ 2)在BES系统中，能量、物质、资本和人口的流量是什么，这些流量彼此之间是如何联系的，它们在长期内是如何变化的？ 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，以改善其环境质量，减少对下游空气和流域的污染？ 激发这些问题的概念框架包括生态，水文和社会斑块动态，人类生态系统框架和外来物种在社区组织中的作用，以及社会空间关系，复原力，生物复杂性和城市设计的理论。 智力贡献。 拟议的研究建立在从古生态，通过历史时间框架，以模拟未来情景的数据集。拟议的新研究重点包括：1）使用10亿美元的巴尔的摩城市计划，以改善卫生下水道基础设施作为实验操作，2）城市流域恢复的综合物理，生物和社会分析（分水岭263）项目由美国林务局和其他来源资助超过100万美元，3）继续开发第一个城市微气象通量塔，用于分析碳和水通量，以及4）继续发展关于声望生态学的想法，其中生活方式群体而不是更传统的指标，如种族，收入和教育被用来解释城市生态系统结构和功能的变化。 将通过继续开发和使用新的高分辨率城市土地覆盖物分类系统（HERCULES）以及一系列针对不同问题在不同尺度上运作的模型来促进这些努力的整合。 更广泛的影响。 BES的研究将探索新的、与管理相关的环境干预措施，如流域263恢复倡议，以探索城市重新造林对雨水管理的作用。对巴尔的摩市下水道基础设施改善情况的评估将产生对管理人员和决策者以及受影响的水和下水道流域的教育工作者和社区团体广泛有用的结果。 生态系统服务的建模将是新研究的一个标志，为公民和决策者提供有用和有趣的信息。 生物多样性和生态系统服务局新的教育和外联举措将包括分析正式和非正式的教育方法如何促进人们将城市视为一个生态系统的能力，以及为城市森林效应模型开发新的模块，以评估城市森林的健康及其对能源使用、水和空气污染的影响。教育活动将建立在成功的课程开发、教师研讨会和与K-12学生的互动的基础上，特别关注代表性不足的群体。 课堂外的培训将包括暑期实习和社区中心和城市环境中心的课后项目，也包括代表性不足的群体。 新的研究生培训将集中在城市设计的新合作。 将通过跨站点LTER站点项目和城市生态协作实现多城市信息传输。

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) was initiated as an LTER project in 1997, designed to understand the controls on urban system structure and function, and how structure and function of the urban ecosystem affect one another. The proposed research will expand the first phase BES work by addressing three fundamental questions: 1) How do the spatial structures of socio-economic, ecological and physical features of 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 the BES system, how do these fluxes relate to one another and how do they change over the long term? 3) How can people develop and use an understanding of the metropolis as an ecological system to improve the quality of their environment and to reduce pollution to downstream air and watersheds? Conceptual frameworks motivating these questions include ecological, hydrologic and social patch dynamics, the human ecosystem framework and the role of exotics in community organization, as well as theories in socio-spatial relationships, resilience, biocomplexity and urban design. Intellectual Contributions. The proposed research builds on data sets ranging from paleoecological, through historic time frames, to simulation of future scenarios. Highlights of proposed new research include: 1) using a $1 billion Baltimore City program to improve sanitary sewer infrastructure as an experimental manipulation, 2) an integrated physical, biological and social analysis of an urban watershed restoration (Watershed 263) project funded by over $1 million in U.S. Forest Service and other sources, 3) continued development of the first urban micrometeorological flux tower for analysis of carbon and water fluxes, and 4) continued development of ideas about the ecology of prestige, where lifestyle groups rather than more traditional metrics such as race, income and education are used to explain variation in urban ecosystem structure and function. Integration of these efforts will be facilitated by continued development and use of a new, high-resolution urban land cover classification system (HERCULES), and by a series of models that operate at different scales for different questions. Broader Impacts. BES research will exploit new, management-relevant environmental interventions, such as the Watershed 263 restoration initiative to explore the role of urban reforestation on stormwater management. Evaluation of improvements to Baltimore City's sewer infrastructure will yield results broadly useful to managers and policy makers and to educators and community groups in the affected water- and sewer-sheds. Modeling of ecosystem services will be a hallmark of the new research, providing information useful and interesting to citizens and decision leaders. New BES education and outreach initiatives will include analyses of how formal and informal approaches to education facilitate the ability of people to think about the city as an ecosystem and development of new modules for the Urban Forest Effects (UFORE) model to evaluate the health of urban forests and their effects on energy use and water and air pollution. Education activities will build on successful curriculum development, teacher workshops and interactions with K-12 students, with special attention on reaching under-represented groups. Training outside the classroom will include summer internships and after school programs at community centers and city environmental centers, again including under-represented groups. Novel graduate training will focus on a new collaboration in urban design. Multi-city information transfer will be achieved through cross-site LTER site projects and through an Urban Ecology Collaborative.