Award Abstract # 2045382
LTER: The Changing Nature of Cities: Ecological and Social Dynamics in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Urban Ecosystem

NSF Org: DEB
Division Of Environmental Biology
Recipient: REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Initial Amendment Date: March 8, 2021
Latest Amendment Date: July 17, 2025
Award Number: 2045382
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Robyn Smyth
rsmyth@nsf.gov
 (703)292-2996
DEB
 Division Of Environmental Biology
BIO
 Directorate for Biological Sciences
Start Date: March 15, 2021
End Date: February 28, 2027 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $7,126,200.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $5,938,500.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2021 = $1,187,700.00
FY 2022 = $1,187,700.00

FY 2023 = $1,187,700.00

FY 2024 = $1,187,700.00

FY 2025 = $1,187,700.00
History of Investigator:
  • Sarah Hobbie (Principal Investigator)
    shobbie@umn.edu
  • Jacques Finlay (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Mae Davenport (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Bonnie Keeler (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Xue Feng (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Kristen Nelson (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
2221 UNIVERSITY AVE SE STE 100
MINNEAPOLIS
MN  US  55414-3074
(612)624-5599
Sponsor Congressional District: 05
Primary Place of Performance: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
1479 Gortner Ave.
Saint Paul
MN  US  55108-1041
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
04
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): KABJZBBJ4B54
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Primary Program Source: 01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 1195, 7218, 9251
Program Element Code(s): 119500
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.074, 47.075

ABSTRACT

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 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. 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 decisions about urban nature. Finally, the project will explore how the long-term process of growing partnerships for knowledge creation and practice can 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 are addressed through institutional and policy change with long-term socio-ecological 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.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Hobbie, Sarah E. and King, Rachel A. and Belo, Tessa and Kalinosky, Paula and Baker, Lawrence A. and Finlay, Jacques C. and Buyarski, Christopher A. and Bintner, Ross "Sources of variation in nutrient loads collected through street sweeping in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area, Minnesota, USA" Science of The Total Environment , v.905 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166934 Citation Details
Holgerson, Meredith A. and Richardson, David C. and Roith, Joseph and Bortolotti, Lauren E. and Finlay, Kerri and Hornbach, Daniel J. and Gurung, Kshitij and Ness, Andrew and Andersen, Mikkel R. and Bansal, Sheel and Finlay, Jacques C. and CianciGaskill, "Classifying Mixing Regimes in Ponds and Shallow Lakes" Water Resources Research , v.58 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR032522 Citation Details
Janke, Benjamin D. and Finlay, Jacques C. and Taguchi, Vinicius J. and Gulliver, John S. "Hydrologic processes regulate nutrient retention in stormwater detention ponds" Science of The Total Environment , v.823 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153722 Citation Details
Kay, Adam D. and Hughes, Michael T. and Ammend, Maddie G. and Granger, Mckenzie R. and Hodge, Jake J. and Mohamud, Jamaal and Romfoe, Ellie A. and Said, Halima and Selden, Liam and Welter, Alex L. and Heinen-Kay, Justa L. "College squirrels gone wild? Using Sciurus carolinensis behavior to assess the ecosystem value of urban green spaces" Urban Ecosystems , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-022-01288-7 Citation Details
(Showing: 1 - 10 of 29)

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