SEES Fellows: Sustainability begins at home - Understanding linkages between stewardship, urban yards and biodiversity

本研究将探讨与可持续庭院实践和设计管理相关的动机和结果，“可持续庭院”是指那些更接近于模仿自然过程和植被组成和配置的庭院。该研究将以一个概念框架为指导，该框架侧重于可持续庭院的城市管理动机与庭院管理的生态结果之间鲜为人知的联系。该项目将通过有针对性的访谈和与科学家、实践者和房主的焦点小组来调查住宅庭院的美学和生态功能。还将进行景观干预研究，以测试私人庭院中不同的草坪修剪制度如何影响传粉媒介的多样性。随着我们的世界日益城市化，找到协调城市发展与生态完整性的方法仍然是一项挑战。尽管可持续庭院有利于改善城市生物多样性，从而使城市居民与自然重新联系起来，但可持续庭院的实施规模并未影响当地或区域的可持续性。这项研究以及相关的推广和教育活动将有助于我们了解如何最大限度地利用住宅庭院为人类、生物多样性和生态系统过程提供的好处。住宅庭院为城市居民提供了一个机会，让他们实践“可持续性从家庭开始”的现实，并做出个人家庭层面的庭院管理决策，从而扩大和改善城市层面的人类和野生动物可持续性。该项目由美国国家科学基金会科学、工程和教育可持续发展研究员（SEES研究员）计划支持，其目标是帮助实现必要的发现，为导致环境、能源和社会可持续发展的行动提供信息，同时创造必要的劳动力来应对这些挑战。在see研究员的支持下，该项目将使有前途的早期职业研究人员能够在与可持续性相关的独立研究生涯中建立自己的职业生涯。

This research will explore the motivations for and outcomes associated with the stewardship of sustainable yard practices and design, with "sustainable yards" being those that more closely mimic natural processes and vegetation composition and configuration. The research will be guided by a conceptual framework that focuses on the poorly understood linkages between the motivation for urban stewardship of sustainable yards, and the ecological outcomes from yard management. The project will investigate perspectives on the aesthetic and ecological functions of residential yards through targeted interviews and focus groups with scientists, practitioners and homeowners. A landscape intervention study will also be conducted to test how various lawn mowing regimes in private yards influence pollinator diversity. As our world becomes increasingly urbanized, identifying ways to reconcile urban development with ecological integrity remains a challenge. Despite the benefits of sustainable yards for improving urban biodiversity and hence, reconnecting urban dwellers with nature, sustainable yards are not implemented at a scale that impacts local or regional sustainability. This research, and associated outreach and education activities, will contribute to our understanding of how to maximize the benefits provided by residential yards for people, biodiversity, and ecosystem processes. Residential yards provide an opportunity for urban dwellers to put into practice the reality that "sustainability begins at home" and to make individual household-level yard management decisions that can scale up and improve city-level sustainability for people and wildlife.This project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. With SEES Fellows support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish themselves in an independent research career related to sustainability.