Award Abstract # 1637661
LTER: Dynamic heterogeneity: Investigating causes and consequences of ecological change in the Baltimore urban ecosystem

NSF Org: DEB
Division Of Environmental Biology
Recipient: CARY INSTITUTE OF ECOSYSTEM STUDIES, INC
Initial Amendment Date: March 3, 2017
Latest Amendment Date: March 29, 2018
Award Number: 1637661
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Douglas Levey
DEB
 Division Of Environmental Biology
BIO
 Directorate for Biological Sciences
Start Date: March 1, 2017
End Date: February 28, 2021 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $2,254,000.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $2,312,110.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2017 = $1,185,110.00
FY 2018 = $1,127,000.00
History of Investigator:
  • Emma Rosi (Principal Investigator)
    rosie@caryinstitute.org
  • Steward Pickett (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Peter Groffman (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Claire Welty (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Jonathan Grove (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Inc.
2801 SHARON TPKE
MILLBROOK
NY  US  12545-5721
(845)677-7600
Sponsor Congressional District: 18
Primary Place of Performance: Institute of Ecosystem Studies
NY  US  12545-0129
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
18
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): ZFCRKN45MMD6
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Primary Program Source: 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 9178, 9251, 9278
Program Element Code(s): 119500
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.074

ABSTRACT

Urban populations continue to expand around the world, highlighting the growing need for scientific information to deepen our understanding of ecological and social factors that influence the structure and function of urban ecosystems. A robust set of theories and models of cities as social-ecological systems is necessary to help cities adapt to changing conditions, and improve environmental quality both within cities themselves, and in the hinterlands that lie within their ecological footprints. In addition, knowledge of the drivers of ongoing changes within existing cities and suburbs are important for environmental sustainability, economic vitality, and human well-being. The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) is a Long-Term Ecological Research project that is committed to understanding metropolitan Baltimore, MD, as an ecological system, and to sharing crucial ecological knowledge with communities, educators, and decision makers in the city and surrounding regions. A long-term approach to understanding urban systems is required because 1) many ecological processes that occur in cities, such as changes in plant communities, animal diversity, and soil development, are slow, 2) many of the intense and even catastrophic events that change city form and function occur only infrequently, and 3) the feedbacks between ecological processes and human actions unfold over long-time periods. BES has discovered clear baselines and has documented trajectories of environmental change over nearly two decades of concentrated research. These ongoing studies have documented surprising results about the functioning of urban systems, tested or modified existing ecological models, and generated new ways to understand the city as an ecosystem. Many of these insights have been incorporated into curricula and educational materials for K-12 and post-secondary education. The new urban models and perspectives developed in BES have proven to be important for understanding cities and regions well beyond Baltimore.

The fundamental challenge and mission of BES is to understand and discover how biological, physical, and human factors interact to change urban ecosystems over long time scales. The project addresses three questions that reflect the complex nature of urban ecosystems: 1) How do hydrology, ecosystem nutrient transformations, and social factors affect transport and retention of nutrients and contaminants by urban watersheds; 2) How do species composition and structure of biological communities respond to a complex set of biophysical and social processes; and 3) How do human choices about land management interact with watershed dynamics and the structure of biological communities? These questions emerge from fundamental theories of the drivers of nutrient retention in ecosystems, biodiversity and ecosystem function, metacommunity dynamics and human decision-making. The BES research team will continue to collect key long-term data on stream and watershed function, the biodiversity of plants, animals, and microbes, and human resource use and social structure. We will develop and implement new spatially extensive field sampling to improve knowledge about 1) the spatial linkages between streams and their watersheds, 2) the role of human management on diversity in plant and insect communities, and 3) the impact of both market and non-market land use decisions on ecosystem processes. Our overall approach is to co-locate research across all disciplines on three watersheds to facilitate the level of social-ecological integration necessary to achieve deep understanding of urban ecosystem structure and function.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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(Showing: 1 - 10 of 113)
Arango, Clay P. and Beaulieu, Jake J. and Fritz, Ken M. and Hill, Brian H. and Elonen, Colleen M. and Pennino, Michael J. and Mayer, Paul M. and Kaushal, Sujay S. and Balz, Adam D. "Urban infrastructure influences dissolved organic matter quality and bacterial metabolism in an urban stream network" Freshwater Biology , v.62 , 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.13035 Citation Details
Avolio, Meghan and Blanchette, Allison and Sonti, Nancy F. and Locke, Dexter H. "Time Is Not Money: Income Is More Important Than Lifestage for Explaining Patterns of Residential Yard Plant Community Structure and Diversity in Baltimore" Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution , v.8 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.00085 Citation Details
Baatz, Roland and Sullivan, Pamela L. and Li, Li and Weintraub, Samantha R. and Loescher, Henry W. and Mirtl, Michael and Groffman, Peter M. and Wall, Diana H. and Young, Michael and White, Tim and Wen, Hang and Zacharias, Steffen and Kühn, Ingolf and Tan "Steering operational synergies in terrestrial observation networks: opportunity for advancing Earth system dynamics modelling" Earth System Dynamics , v.9 , 2018 https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-593-2018 Citation Details
Barnes, Michael L. and Welty, Claire and Miller, Andrew J. "Impacts of Development Pattern on Urban Groundwater Flow Regime" Water Resources Research , v.54 , 2018 10.1029/2017WR022146 Citation Details
Bernhardt, Emily S. and Blaszczak, Joanna R. and Ficken, Cari D. and Fork, Megan L. and Kaiser, Kendra E. and Seybold, Erin C. "Control Points in Ecosystems: Moving Beyond the Hot Spot Hot Moment Concept" Ecosystems , v.20 , 2017 10.1007/s10021-016-0103-y Citation Details
Bernhardt, Emily S and Rosi, Emma J and Gessner, Mark O "Synthetic chemicals as agents of global change" Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment , v.15 , 2017 10.1002/fee.1450 Citation Details
Bianchi, Thomas S. and Anand, Madhur and Bauch, Chris T. and Canfield, Donald E. and De Meester, Luc and Fennel, Katja and Groffman, Peter M. and Pace, Michael L. and Saito, Mak and Simpson, Myrna J. "Ideas and perspectives: Biogeochemistry some key foci for the future" Biogeosciences , v.18 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3005-2021 Citation Details
Bird, Darcy L. and Groffman, Peter M. and Salice, Christopher J. and Moore, Joel "Steady-State Land Cover but Non-Steady-State Major Ion Chemistry in Urban Streams" Environmental Science & Technology , v.52 , 2018 10.1021/acs.est.8b03587 Citation Details
Blaszczak, Joanna R. and Steele, Meredith K. and Badgley, Brian D. and Heffernan, Jim B. and Hobbie, Sarah E. and Morse, Jennifer L. and Rivers, Erin N. and Hall, Sharon J. and Neill, Christopher and Pataki, Diane E. and Groffman, Peter M. and Bernhardt, "Sediment chemistry of urban stormwater ponds and controls on denitrification" Ecosphere , v.9 , 2018 10.1002/ecs2.2318 Citation Details
Bodner, Danielle and LaDeau, Shannon L and Leisnham, Paul T "Relationships Among Immature-Stage Metrics and Adult Abundances of Mosquito Populations in Baltimore, MD" Journal of Medical Entomology , v.56 , 2018 10.1093/jme/tjy185 Citation Details
Borowy, Dorothy and Swan, Christopher M. "A Multi-Trait Comparison of an Urban Plant Species Pool Reveals the Importance of Intraspecific Trait Variation and Its Influence on Distinct Functional Responses to Soil Quality" Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution , v.8 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.00068 Citation Details
(Showing: 1 - 10 of 113)

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.

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) began in 1998 with three questions to advance understanding of urban areas as an ecosystem type: 1) Structure: What is the spatial and temporal patch structure of ecological, physical, and socio-economic factors in the urban ecosystem? 2) Function: What are the fluxes of energy, matter, and populations in the patches in the urban ecosystem? and 3) People: What are the choices people and their organizations make that affect the urban ecosystem? We initiated long-term data collection in these areas guided by a conceptual model based on patch dynamics, i.e., that there are coherent feedbacks among ecological, physical, and socio-political patches within an urban ecosystem that control ecological fluxes of water, nutrients and carbon, ecological communities, and people?s environmental perceptions and behaviors. BES has focused on three focal process areas: watershed biogeochemistry, ecological communities and sentinel species, and human environmental perceptions and behaviors.

Specific contributions of this phase of BES (2016-2020) include:

Watershed research: Continuous data on stream stage coupled with weekly manual sampling of stream water for water quality analyses have been conducted from 1998-2021. Weekly analyses include nitrate, phosphate, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, chloride, sulfate, turbidity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH. These data have led to important discoveries on the long-term dynamics of the load of nutrients and other pollutants from BES watersheds.  For example, long-term BES records demonstrate a relationship between green infrastructure installation and watershed nutrient retention, urban streams are significant sources of greenhouse gases, and stream production dynamics are highly responsive to floods.

Biogeochemistry of terrestrial habitats: The BES established long-term forest, grass and riparian study plots that have been sampled monthly. At these sites we measured soil temperature and moisture and make monthly measurements of soil:atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane (in situ chambers), and leaching fluxes (zero tension and suction lysimeters) of N and P.  For example, methane uptake has declined markedly in the rural forests over the past 16 years, likely due to increases in precipitation and uptake is greatly reduced in urban forests, and completely eliminated in lawns, likely due to changes in atmospheric chemistry and soil disturbance.

Urban forest canopy and vegetation dynamics: The main platform for long-term biotic data collection was the iTree sampling protocol that use standardized field data from 202 stratified randomly located plots to quantify urban forest structure, species composition, tree health, and diameter distribution. BES also assessed herbaceous plant populations and found an effect of management intensity of plant diversity and phylogenetic diversity of the natives species was more important than functional diversity in explaining increases in native plants cover in urban vacant land.

Sentinel Species: BES included data collection on sentinel species in the urban landscape including birds, mosquitos, soil invertebrates, and riparian and upland herbaceous vegetation.  These long-term data illustrated the influence of land use, urban population dynamics, and climate change on species of interest in Baltimore.  For example, infrastructure and vegetation interact with temperature and precipitation patterns to influence mosquito populations in Baltimore.  Understanding these patterns is crucial for modeling populations of important pest species.

Human-Environment Interactions: This research includes a long-term telephone survey (conducted approximately every 5 years) investigating people's environmental perceptions, investigation of the connections among environmental organizations, exploration of real estate transactions to explore the influence of environmental conditions on housing values, among others. These data have led to insights about people's knowledge of watersheds and their willingness to support local environmental regulations.  In addition, patterns and procedures in the city's early history of formal and informal segregation, followed by "redlining" in the 1930s, have left indelible patterns of social and environmental inequalities. These patterns are manifest in the distribution of environmental disamenities such as polluting industries, urban heat islands, and vulnerability to flooding, and they are also evident in the distribution of environmental amenities such as parks and trees.

Theoretical Advances in Urban Ecology: In addition to empirical studies and long-term measurements, the BES LTER made significant contributions to the theory of urban ecology.  These advances are highlighted in the book text that was published during this phase; "Science for the Sustainable City: Empirical Insights from the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology".

Advances in Urban Ecosystem Education: The BES LTER also made significant contributions to the theory and practice of urban ecosystem education. BES educators have built on their long-term experiences to champion the incorporation BES data into the classrooms of Baltimore area High School Students.  In addition, BES Education has conducted a series of Data Jams wherein students are challenged analyze a socio-ecological data set from the Baltimore region and present the "story" of their data set to a non-scientist audience through graphs, written explanations and a creative project.

 


Last Modified: 07/03/2021
Modified by: Emma J Rosi

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