| NSF Org: |
EF Emerging Frontiers |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | June 28, 2011 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 6, 2012 |
| Award Number: | 1065785 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Elizabeth Blood
EF Emerging Frontiers BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | July 1, 2011 |
| End Date: | June 30, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $1,201,912.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,204,712.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2012 = $598,147.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2801 SHARON TPKE MILLBROOK NY US 12545-5721 (845)677-7600 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2801 SHARON TPKE MILLBROOK NY US 12545-5721 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | MacroSysBIO & NEON-Enabled Sci |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001213DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001314DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
Urban, suburban and exurban environments are important ecosystems and their extent is increasing in the U.S. The conversion of wild or managed ecosystems to urban ecosystems is resulting in ecosystem homogenization across cities, where neighborhoods in very different parts of the country have similar patterns of roads, residential lots, commercial areas and aquatic features. Funds are provided to test the hypothesis that this homogenization alters ecological structure and functions relevant to ecosystem carbon and nitrogen dynamics, with continental scale implications. The research will provide a framework for understanding the impacts of urban land use change from local to continental scales. The research encompasses datasets ranging from household surveys to regional-scale remote sensing across six metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) that cover the major climatic regions of the US (Phoenix, AZ, Miami, FL, Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, St. Paul, MN and Los Angeles, CA) to determine how household characteristics correlate with landscaping decisions, land management practices and ecological structure and functions at local, regional and continental scales. This research will transform scientific understanding of an important and increasingly common ecosystem type (?suburbia?) and the consequences to carbon storage and nitrogen pollution at multiple scales. In addition, it will advance understanding of how humans perceive, value and manage their surroundings. The award will leverage an extensive, multi-scale program of education and outreach associated with ongoing LTER and/or ULTRA-EX projects. Activities include K-12 education and outreach to community groups, city/regional planners, natural history museums, state and local agencies and non-governmental organizations. Graduate students will participate in a Distributed Graduate Seminar in Sustainability Science (DGSS) initiated by NCEAS and the University of Minnesota Institute on Environment.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Urban, suburban and exurban land use cover an increasingly large area of the U.S. Our research shows that this area of human settlements represents a macrosystem, which we define as “regional to continental extents with distances spanning hundreds to thousands of kilometers with biological, geophysical and social components that interact with one another and with phenomena at other spatial or temporal scales ranging from days to millennia.” This “American Residential Macrosystem” has enormous impacts on continental-scale water, energy, carbon and nutrient dynamics and is fundamental to the quality of life of human populations. Further, the large and expanding extent of this system at the interface with agricultural and less human-dominated systems suggests that it has broader, continental-scale impacts on community assembly, evolution and ecosystem response to global environmental change.
Our researched focused on “ecological homogenization” i.e., a process in which residential ecosystems and landscapes across the continent are hypothesized to be more similar than the native ecosystems that they replaced”. We characterized and evaluated continental-scale effects of homogenization on plant biodiversity, soil carbon and nitrogen cycle pools and processes, microclimate, hydrography and land cover in six cities across the U.S. (Boston, Baltimore, Miami, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Phoenix and Los Angeles). We have determined that these effects are driven by human decisions and actions at multiple scales, e.g., parcel, neighborhood, region (metropolitan statistical area).
More broadly, our ecological analysis of the American Residential Macrosystem has suggested that human dynamics interact with natural processes of community assembly to affect ecosystem structure and function not only in the dense urban core areas of cities, but also in the much larger and ecologically dynamic areas of suburban and exurban lands surrounding cities. The suburban and exurban lands that exist at the interface with agricultural and less human-dominated (“natural”) ecosystems are where the communities and ecosystems that will dominate the continent over the next 100 years are being assembled.
Last Modified: 09/27/2016
Modified by: Peter M Groffman
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