ULTRA-Ex: Collaborative Research: Land- and Water-Use Decision Making and Ecosystem Services Along a Southwestern Socioecological Gradient

世界范围内城市人口和物质的迅速扩张，增加了了解导致城市化的因素以及城市扩张对人类和环境的影响的紧迫性。目前对城市化作为一个耦合的社会生态系统的理解，由于对大都市地区提供的生态系统服务的类型、数量和质量以及行动者如何将生态系统服务和家庭偏好纳入管理决策的认识不足而受到限制。生态系统服务提供了一种可科学测量的服务和功能，这种服务和功能来源于对生态系统结构或过程的科学理解，例如树冠覆盖的冷却。生态系统偏好是衡量人们愿意为什么样的生态系统服务付费，比如靠近休闲区或清洁空气。这些偏好往往体现在房价上。这个跨学科的研究项目将调查决策者如何根据在干旱的西南部城市周围的荒地-农村-城市边缘测量和首选的生态系统服务来回应和做出土地利用和用水决策。将采用比较的梯度方法，以新墨西哥州的拉斯克鲁塞斯和阿尔伯克基大都市地区以及亚利桑那州的凤凰城作为案例研究。通过在干旱环境下考察三个城市的人口、经济和自然梯度，本项目将增加对资源稀缺环境下城市化进程规模的基本认识。选择西南地区的背景将提供更深入了解沙漠城市的城市化进程，这在城市理论中代表性不足。主要方法包括利益相关者论坛和决策者焦点小组，房价和生态系统服务便利的享乐模型，以及生态系统服务的生物物理模型。决策者在决策中考虑生态系统服务和偏好的程度尚不清楚。在城市可持续性对指导政策日益重要的时代，该项目将解决城市治理中这一尚未得到充分研究但至关重要的方面。该项目将为干旱城市化地区的从业者提供关于生态系统服务和偏好的新认识，他们可以利用这些认识制定和促进最佳管理实践。拟议的访谈和利益相关者论坛将使决策者和公民团体在如何管理快速增长的边缘地区的土地和水方面发出声音。拟议的活动还将使研究小组能够评估哪些生态系统服务和偏好对利益相关者来说是重要的，以便未来的研究能够解决这些问题。这些活动和成果将传达给市、县、州和联邦各级的决策者，以及有关的公民团体、房地产开发商和部落团体。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。

Rapid population and physical expansion of cities worldwide has increased the urgency for understanding the factors that result in urbanization and the consequences of urban expansion for human beings and the environment. Present understanding of urbanization as a coupled socioecological system is limited by inadequate knowledge of the type, quantity, and quality of ecosystem services delivered in metropolitan regions and how actors incorporate both considerations of ecosystem services and household preferences into management decisions. Ecosystem services provide a service and function that is scientifically measureable and derived from a scientific understanding of ecosystem structures or processes, such as cooling from tree canopy cover. Ecosystem preferences are measurements of what ecosystem services people are willing to pay for, such as being close to recreation areas or clean air. These preferences often are revealed in housing prices. This interdisciplinary research project will investigate how decision makers respond to and make land-use and water-use decisions based on measured and preferred ecosystem services on the wildland-rural-urban fringe surrounding urban areas in the arid southwest. A comparative, gradient approach using the metropolitan areas of Las Cruces and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Phoenix, Arizona, as case studies will be employed. By examining three cities along population, economic, and physical gradients in an arid environment, this project should add to basic knowledge about scaling in the urbanization process in a resource scarce environment. Choosing a southwestern regional context will provide greater insight into the urbanization processes in desert cities, which are underrepresented in urban theory. Primary methods include stakeholder forums and focus groups with decision makers, hedonic modeling of houses prices and ecosystem service amenities, and biophysical modeling of ecosystem services.The degree to which decision makers consider ecosystem services and preferences in their decisions remains unclear. In an era when urban sustainability is increasingly important for guiding policy, this project will address this understudied but critical aspect of urban governance. The project will provide new understanding about ecosystem services and preferences to practitioners in arid urbanizing regions, which they can use to formulate and facilitate best management practices. Proposed interviews and stakeholder forums will give decision makers and citizen groups a voice in how land and water should be managed on the rapidly growing fringe. The proposed activities also will allow the research team to assess which ecosystem services and preferences are important to stakeholders, so that future research can address those concerns. The activities and results will reach decision makers at the city, county, state, and federal levels as well as concerned citizen groups, real estate developers, and tribal groups. 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.