ULTRA-Ex: Connecting the Social and Ecological Sciences with Planners, Managers, and the Public

生态功能良好的城市对于满足缓解和适应气候变化、为不断增长和多样化的人口提供高质量的居住场所等紧迫需求至关重要。这个研究项目将通过解决一个基本问题来帮助提高城市的生态功能：在一个复杂的城市/大都市系统中，保护生物多样性和为人们提供生态系统服务之间的协同作用和权衡是什么？调查人员将把重点放在芝加哥荒野联盟的绿色基础设施愿景上，这是一个由240多个组织组成的保护联盟。旨在实施芝加哥荒野生物多样性恢复计划的绿色基础设施愿景已经影响了整个芝加哥大都市区的长期土地规划。绿色基础设施愿景确定了150万英亩的推荐资源保护区，这些土地需要仔细规划和管理，以保护芝加哥荒野网络中已经受保护的36万英亩土地和水域。两名博士后研究人员将与ULTRA-Ex研究团队（他们来自不同的研究机构和政府机构）合作，以实现两个主要目标。他们的第一个目标是对整个芝加哥地区的绿色基础设施愿景的生物多样性恢复目标与向人类社区提供关键生态系统服务之间的联系进行批判性检查。研究人员将在生物多样性管理、绿色基础设施概念和实施以及从文化到生物地球化学的生态系统服务提供的背景下研究社会和生态系统之间的联系。他们的第二个主要目标是为芝加哥的城市环境研究人员建立一个多方面的、互动的、基于网络的中心。该中心将包括一个交互式平台，用于管理数据，向规划者和公众传播研究成果，并与科学家和实践者进行协作和互动。它还将成为城市生态系统研究和政策的保护伞和焦点，并将与区域教育和推广项目合作。该研究项目将开发有关生物多样性和生态系统功能、绿色基础设施规划、基于资产的分析和弹性理论的新信息。该项目的一个新颖方面是应用科学工具来研究在复杂的大都市景观中保护生物多样性和提供一系列生态系统服务之间的关系。该项目将提供科学客观的信息，以加强芝加哥市和整个芝加哥大都市区的规划和保护实践。芝加哥地区面临的需求与其他城市地区一样。因此，项目结果将有助于理解美国和世界其他地区复杂社会生态系统的动态。该研究项目将整合由多所大学的生态学家、城市规划者、社会科学家组成的研究小组和联邦机构、芝加哥市政府，加强科学基础设施。该项目还将加强社会科学和自然科学的跨学科教育，通过由来自几个机构的教员、研究人员和规划人员讲授的芝加哥范围内的跨学科研究生课程。该奖项是由国家科学基金会和美国农业部林业局联合支持的一项特殊竞赛的结果，作为城市长期研究区域探索奖（ULTRA-Ex）的资助。

Cities that function well ecologically are critical to meeting pressing needs like mitigating and adapting to climate change and providing high-quality places to live for a growing and diversifying populace. This research project will help increase the ecological functioning of cities by addressing a fundamental question: In a complex urban/metropolitan system, what are the synergies and tradeoffs between conserving biodiversity and providing ecosystem services to people? The investigators will focus on the Green Infrastructure Vision of the Chicago Wilderness alliance, a conservation consortium of more than 240 organizations. The Green Infrastructure Vision, designed to implement the Chicago Wilderness Biodiversity Recovery Plan, is already influencing long-range land planning throughout the Chicago metropolitan region. The Green Infrastructure Vision identifies 1.5 million acres of recommended resource protection areas -- lands that need careful planning and management in order to protect the 360,000 acres of already protected lands and waters in the Chicago Wilderness network. Two postdoctoral researchers will work with the ULTRA-Ex research team (who come from a diversity of research institutions and governmental agencies) to accomplish two major objectives. Their first objective is to conduct a critical examination of the connections between the biodiversity-recovery goals of the region-wide Green Infrastructure Vision and the delivery of critical ecosystem services to human communities throughout the Chicago region. The researchers will examine links between social and ecological systems in the context of biodiversity management, green-infrastructure conceptualization and implementation, and the delivery of ecosystem services from cultural to biogeochemical. Their second major objective is to develop a multi-faceted, interactive, web-based Chicago hub of urban environmental researchers. This hub will include an interactive platform for managing data, communicating research findings to planners and the public, and collaborating and interacting with scientists and practitioners. It will also be an umbrella and focal point for urban ecosystem research and policy, and it will partner with regional education and outreach programs.This research project will develop new information about biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, green-infrastructure planning, asset-based analysis, and resilience theory. A novel facet of the project is the application of scientific tools to investigate the relationship between the protection of biodiversity and the delivery of a range of ecosystem services in a complex metropolitan landscape. The project will provide scientifically objective information to strengthen planning and conservation practices in the City of Chicago and the entire Chicago metropolitan region. Needs faced in the Chicago region are faced in other urban areas. Project results therefore will have utility for understanding the dynamics of complex socioecological systems of other regions of the U.S. and the world. The research project will strengthen the infrastructure of science by integrating research groups consisting of ecologists, urban planners, and social scientists in several universities, a federal agency, and the city of Chicago administration. The project also will strengthen interdisciplinary education in the social and natural sciences through a Chicago-wide interdisciplinary graduate course taught by faculty, researchers, and planners from several institutions. This award was funded as an Urban Long-Term Research Area Exploratory (ULTRA-Ex) award as the result of a special competition jointly supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.