CNH-L: Linking Ecosystem Services and Governance of Water Resources in Urbanized Landscapes

世界上一半以上的人口生活在城市，城市增长正在加速。水资源有限的干旱和半干旱城市正在经历世界范围内人口和土地变化的不成比例的增长，对水资源的压力越来越大，自然水文系统正在改变。城市在为市政和工业用途提供清洁用水以及管理环境水质和城市化带来的洪水风险方面面临重大挑战。城市的发展将需要对基础设施和适应水资源限制的新战略进行持续投资。面对人口和全球变化，干旱和半干旱城市水资源的可持续性将是一个关键挑战。应对这一挑战需要更好地了解水的供应和分配如何随着城市化而变化，以及这些变化如何影响生态系统服务的提供和政策应对。旨在加强与水资源有关的生态系统服务的政策和治理决定必须以科学证据为基础，才能有效。然而，更好的科学并不一定会带来更好的治理;科学知识与根据这种知识采取的行动之间仍然存在差距。该项目的目标是提高对生态系统服务与水资源治理之间联系的认识。 该项目将研究美国西南部半干旱城市的自然和人文组成部分，以确定这些城市化系统的各种属性是否鼓励学习和行动，从而产生更可持续的结果。本研究将借鉴明确将生态结构和功能与生态系统服务、信息流与决策联系起来的理论框架。具体而言，将讨论四个关键问题：（a）降雨和径流的频率、强度和重新分布如何影响干旱和半干旱城市化系统的生态水文反应，并产生紧急生态系统服务？(b)人类系统条件如何影响城市一级对影响生态系统服务提供的行动的了解？(c)自然系统条件如何影响社交网络、对水资源管理和基础设施的理解和决策？和（d）在改造建筑环境方面采取了哪些行动，影响建筑环境对自然系统进程的影响？这些问题将通过一系列的现场，调查，实验室，研讨会和合成实验来回答。具体而言，将在图森、Sierra Vista和亚利桑那州的尤马建立一套研究中心，以进行从1公顷/个人到100，000公顷/区域规模的调查。自然系统调查将侧重于生态水文过程如何从点到大的集水区尺度进行整合，并描述生态系统服务的特征。该项目的社会层面将侧重于政策和治理部门，以了解城市一级的学习、决策和行动，重要的是在整个社会和生物气候区域。这项工作将通过研究有关生态系统服务的科学信息如何发展成为决策，并通过调查政策干预如何影响生态系统服务，来整合自然和人类系统。

Over half of the world's population lives in cities and urban growth is accelerating. Water-limited arid and semiarid cities are experiencing disproportionate increases in population and land transformation worldwide, increasing stress on water resources and altering natural hydrological systems. Cities face significant challenges in providing clean water for municipal and industrial uses and in managing the environmental water quality and flooding risks that accompany urbanization. The growth of cities will require a continuing investment in infrastructure and in new strategies to adapt to water resource limitations. In the face of demographic and global change, the sustainability of water resources in arid and semiarid cities will be a key challenge. Addressing this challenge will require improved understanding of how water availability and distribution changes with urbanization, and how these changes affect ecosystem service provision and policy responses. Policy and governance decisions aimed at enhancing ecosystem services related to water resources need to be based on scientific evidence to be effective. However, better science does not necessarily lead to better governance; there remains a gap between scientific knowledge and the actions taken as a result of this knowledge. The objective of this project is to improve understanding of the linkages between ecosystem services and governance of water resources. This project will study the natural and human components of semi-arid cities in the US Southwest in order to determine if various attributes of these urbanized systems encourage learning and action that lead to more sustainable outcomes. This research will draw on theoretical frameworks that explicitly link ecological structure and function to ecosystem services to information flows to decision making. Specifically, four key questions will be addressed: (a) How does the frequency, intensity and redistribution of rainfall and runoff influence the eco-hydrologic response of arid and semi-arid urbanized systems and result in emergent ecosystem services? (b) How do human system conditions affect city-level learning about actions that influence ecosystem service provision? (c) How do natural system conditions influence social networks, understanding, and decision-making about water management and infrastructure? And (d) What actions have been taken, in terms of alterations to the built environment, that influence the effect of the built environment on natural system processes? These questions will be answered through a set of field, survey, lab, workshop, and synthetic experiments. Specifically a suite of research sites will be established in Tucson, Sierra Vista, and Yuma, Arizona that will allow investigations from the 1 ha/individual to the 100,000 ha/regional scales. Natural system investigations will focus on how eco-hydrologic processes integrate from the point to large catchment scale and characterize ecosystem services. The social dimensions of this project will focus on the policy and governance sectors to understand learning, decision-making and action at the municipal scale and importantly across social and bioclimatic regions. This work will integrate across natural and human systems by examining how scientific information about ecosystem services develops into decision making and by investigating how policy interventions impact ecosystem services.