LTER: The Changing Nature of Cities: Ecological and Social Dynamics in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Urban Ecosystem

虽然城市经常让人联想到建筑物，停车场和街道的形象，但它们也是各种自然的家园，在公园，庭院，花园，湖泊，溪流等。这种多样化的城市自然是许多类型的植物和野生动物的重要栖息地，并受到各种压力因素的影响，从有毒污染物到害虫，栖息地碎片化和气候变化。城市自然的多样性对城市居民也至关重要，提供了许多潜在的好处，从美学和健康相关的，到气候控制和娱乐机会。然而，并非所有人都能平等地获得这些好处。该项目将探讨城市居民和城市自然如何相互作用，并应对持续快速的环境和社会变化。最终目标是找出改善城市所有居民环境状况的方法。研究人员将与贝尔博物馆的教育专家合作，帮助中学生和教师学习和教授科学知识，利用他们自己的校园作为自然教室。研究人员还将培养新的大学社区合作伙伴关系，以更好地了解在人类与城市自然的关系中造成社会差异的因素，并了解解决这些差异的方法。明尼阿波利斯-圣保罗（MSP）城市长期生态研究计划（LTER）旨在确定长期的生态环境，长期耦合动力学的城市自然和城市社会系统在面对快速的环境和社会变化。该项目研究了城市自然的组织尺度之间的这种耦合，从栖息地斑块中的各种生物，到溪流和雨水排水网络，再到地表水丰富的景观。该项目还研究了城市社会系统中多个尺度上的人与自然的耦合，从众多城市中以群体形式行动的不同个人到大都市地区复杂的治理系统和机构。具体而言，研究解决了生物多样性如何在栖息地斑块尺度，栖息地碎片化和连接调解生态结构和功能的长期反应，如毒素，害虫，病原体和气候变化的城市压力。研究进一步探讨了城市自然栖息地斑块和不透水覆盖在排水网络和景观尺度的配置和连通性如何影响长期水文，城市气候和水质。研究人员将确定城市自然的生态，水文和气候过程如何随着时间的推移为不同的人类社区创造利益和负担，以及治理，政策和实践如何改变以提高城市自然决策的公平性。最后，该项目将探讨如何发展包容性关系的长期过程，特别是与黑人，土著和其他有色人种的社区，知识创造和实践，改变城市生态系统中的科学和社区成果。通过推进了解污染物，生物多样性，土地覆盖，栖息地碎片化和排水网络特性如何影响城市自然过程，面对环境和社会变化，研究将测试非城市生态系统中开发的生态理论是否可以预测高度修改和管理的城市系统的模式和过程。该项目将揭示人类与城市自然关系中的社会差异模式，以及如何通过制度和政策变革以及长期研究中更大的包容性来解决这种差异。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

While cities often conjure images of buildings, parking lots, and streets, they are also home to diverse kinds of nature, in parks, yards, gardens, lakes, streams, and the like. This diverse urban nature is important habitat for many types of plants and wildlife, and is affected by a variety of stressors, ranging from toxic pollutants, to pests, habitat fragmentation, and climate change. Urban nature, in all its diversity, is also critically important to urban residents, providing numerous potential benefits, ranging from aesthetic and health-related, to climate control and recreational opportunities. However, these benefits are not equally accessible to everyone. This project will explore how urban residents and urban nature interact with one another and respond to ongoing rapid environmental and social change. The ultimate goal is to figure out ways that environmental outcomes can be improved for all people living in the city. Researchers will work with education specialists from the Bell Museum to help middle school students and teachers learn and teach about science, using their own schoolyards as natural classrooms. Researchers will also nurture new university-community partnerships to better understand the factors contributing to social disparities in human relationships with urban nature and to learn about approaches to address those disparities.The Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) Urban Long-Term Ecological Research Program (LTER) aims to determine the long-term coupled dynamics of urban nature and the urban social system in the face of rapid environmental and social change. The project examines this coupling across organizational scales of urban nature from diverse organisms in habitat patches, to stream and stormwater drainage networks, to landscapes with abundant surface water. The project likewise examines human-nature coupling at multiple scales in the urban social system, from diverse individuals acting in groups in numerous municipalities to complex governance systems and institutions at the metropolitan region. Specifically, the research addresses how biodiversity at the organism to habitat patch scales, and habitat fragmentation and connectivity mediate long-term responses of ecological structure and function to urban stressors such as toxins, pests, pathogens, and climate change. The research further explores how configuration and connectivity of urban nature habitat patches and impervious cover at the drainage network and landscape scales influence long-term hydrology, urban climate, and water quality. Researchers will determine how ecological, hydrological, and climate processes of urban nature create benefits and burdens for diverse human communities over time, and in turn how governance, policy, and practice can change to improve equity of urban nature decisions. Finally, the project will explore how the long-term process of growing inclusive relationships, especially with communities of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, for knowledge creation and practice, change scientific and community outcomes in the urban ecosystem. By advancing understanding of how pollutants, biodiversity, land cover, habitat fragmentation, and drainage network properties affect urban nature processes in the face of environmental and social change, research will test whether ecological theories developed in non-urban ecosystems can predict patterns and processes in highly modified and managed urban systems. The project will shed light on patterns of social disparities in human relationships with urban nature and how such disparities can be addressed through institutional and policy change and greater inclusivity in long-term research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.