PTS: 2302BM2.46.6 Title: PWRC - A Workshop to Develop a Strategy for Advancing Urban Ecology Keywords:wetland, coastal, geomorphology, pothole, submerged aquatic vegetation, SAV, sea level, SLR, subsidence, global climate change, global warming, terrapin, salt marsh, restoration, island, seaduck, scoter, ecosystem, vegetation, diet, OMWM, sea grass, climate, open marsh water management Leaders: * Guntenspergen, Glenn R., glenn_guntenspergen@usgs.gov, 218-720-4307, FAX , Natural Resources Research Institute 5013 Miller Trunk Highway, Duluth, MN 55811-1442 Accomplishments: Recent efforts to advance ecological understanding of cities have in¬cluded a 2002 Symposium on Urban Forests and Eco-Cities in Shanghai, China, the Urban-Suburban Working Group report in the State of the Nation¿s Ecosystems (2002), a 2003 workshop on the Comparative Ecology of Cities and Towns in Melbourne, Australia, and the establishment of GLOBENET, a multina¬tional research collaborative that compares effects of cities on soil biota. These efforts highlight approaches adopted from ecological research in other ecosystem types and apply them to urban systems to address questions at multiple scales. These include: 1) the patch dynamic and biotope approaches used to understand larger-scale, ecological responses to landscapes characterized by high degrees of environmental and social heterogeneity; 2) the urban-rural gradient approach used to understand how land-use context might affect species and properties of a particular habitat type, such as forests, and 3) the ecological footprint approach that can be used to determine urban impacts on local, regional and global resources and hence, help assess the vulnerability and resilience of cities to po¬litical and environmental change.
The Shanghai, China symposium of 2002 focused solely on urban forest management, and dealt mainly with furthering appropriate arboricultural methods and restoration ecology in urban parks, highway verges, and riparian areas. The symposium did not deal with urban ecology as a whole and certainly did not deal with the development of urban ecological theory or with strategies for initiating comparative ecological research in cities across the world. The ESA symposium in 1998 was not a workshop, and the research studies reported therein are now dated. The Melbourne Workshop (2003) focused on understanding the effects of urbanization on biophysical factors and conditions. This workshop did not include studies of social drivers of urban condition and did not include participants from tropical and sub-tropical cities.
None of these ef¬forts have primarily focused on achieving multidisciplinary understanding of cities or on identifying research priori¬ties in urban ecology as a whole. There is a pressing need to share, compare, and consolidate the knowledge gained from such studies to identify and improve those approaches and methods that most effectively investigate urban effects on community structure and function across multiple scales and in different geo¬graphic, environmental and socio-political settings. Communication Plan: Products will include a white paper summarizing our findings and a series of papers from the invited plenary speakers and break-out groups, all of which we plan to publish in special issues of Urban Ecosystems, Journal of Applied Ecology, and/or Ecological Applications. Our vision for the White Paper would be that it establishes the paradigms that would accelerate the development of this ecological discipline and shape the quality and direction of research in urban ecology in its next decade of development. This paper would not only provide a brief synthesis of the categories of urban research done in the past, but also articulate and emphasize questions at the biophysical and social interface that need more critical attention. The workshop will provide an outline of approaches, methodologies and types of cooperative, multidisciplinary networks that are needed to further our understanding of the complex biophysical and social feedbacks that define the condition and resilience of urban ecosystems in different biomes of the world. Workshop findings would not only benefit established professionals in the field, but also those contemplating work in this research arena. For example, scientists and managers, alike, would benefit from a cross-system approach that compares and contrasts ecosystem structure and function in different regional contexts. The White Paper would appear in a major ecological journal, like Ecological Applications. The individual panel papers would appear in either the Journal of Applied Ecology or in Urban Ecosystems. The editors-in-chief of both journals have expressed eagerness to publish these papers. In addition, we would provide other mechanisms to achieve worldwide distribution of this information, such as providing the papers or information from the workshop on the websites of the USDA Forest Service¿s Center for Wildland-Urban Interface Research and Information, and the Ecological Society of America¿s Urban Ecosystem Ecology Section. We would also add that there is a precedent for NSF sponsoring a workshop that helped jump-start the development of a new ecological discipline in the USA. In the early 1980¿s, NSF sponsored a workshop in Landscape Ecology at the University of Illinois in Allerton Park. The workshop and its resultant publication, Landscape Ecology: Directions and Approaches (Risser, Carr and Forman, 1983), was pivotal in catalyzing recognition for the need for this discipline, and in driving novel approaches and experimentation that established the importance of this field in North America. We also expect to identify collaborators for future integrative research proposals at the workshop to extend the impact of this meeting. Highlights and Key Findings: Urban land-use change is causing accelerating, widespread modification of agricultural and natural ecosystems throughout the United States and the world. The re¬sultant urban settlements represent complex systems that are only recently being studied from a rigorous ecological perspective. In North America, the study of urban ecosystems has been facilitated by the establishment of the urban LTER sites in Baltimore and Phoenix, by the Chicago Urban Climate Study, and by the New York City Urban-Rural Gradient Project. However, even with current increased interest in urban ecological research, large gaps exist in our understanding of the local to global environmental effects resulting from in¬teractions among the built, human, and natural components of cities. Indeed, we lack a unified set of theories and approaches to guide urban ecological research or to predict ecosystem, community and species population re¬sponses to urban development in different geographic contexts. Objectives: Our workshop will include discussion of the social dimensions of urban change, and 2) provide an integrated blueprint for future research in the field that includes both development of a conceptual framework and comparative methodology to accelerate progress in understanding the ecology of cities in different biomes across the world.
This sub-task addresses goals 3 & 4 of Status and Trends of Biological Resources: Evaluate and develop methods, protocols, experimental design, and technologies for inventory and monitoring biological resources, and Monitor and assess environmental status and trends.
This sub-task also addresses goal 1 of Terrestrial, Freshwater, and Marine Ecosystems Program: Develop indexes of ecosystem sensitivity to change and vulnerability to potential stressors, and tools to predict ecosystem responses to environmental change. Statement of Problem: We propose a workshop that will accelerate the maturation of the discipline of Urban Ecology by refining hypotheses used to address the approaches adopted from ecological research in other ecosystem types and applied to urban systems that address questions at multiple scales, by identifying other approaches, and by developing standardized methods to foster comparative studies among cities. This would facilitate determining common patterns and effects across cities. The workshop will assess the current state of urban ecological knowledge, organize and synthesize this information for researchers, resource manag¬ers, and policy makers, and identify new research directions. The workshop will also contribute to our general understanding of ecological responses to environmental stressors.
Invitations will be sent to a broad base of researchers, not simply those involved in the two Urban LTERs. Urban ecologists have different perspectives and approaches in part because of the geographic context of their cities so we will strive for a representative cross section of individuals from different geographic areas. There will be three categories of participants: 1) a core group of experienced scientists, 2) under-represented minorities, and 3) graduate students and post-doctoral associates. Since we wish to foster cross-system analyses of urban systems in different geographic regions of the country and world, and distill a more unified approach to this emerging field, participation from a core group of representatives from different parts of our country and the world will be imperative. We will make use of our contacts, involvement in such groups as the United Nations Man and the Biosphere Urban Roster, and individuals funded by the NSF Biocomplexity in the Environment (Dynamics of Coupled Human and Natural Systems) Program to develop a list of invitees.
We realize funds from NSF would be limited and so we will cap the amount per person for travel and lodging to $1000 and pay only partial costs for the trip to any one participant, except for students and post-doctoral researchers for a total of 17 individuals. We will seek funds from other agencies within the US government and private foundations (Unity Foundation, A.P. Sloane Foundation, Ittleson Foundation) to fund the travel of International scientists and established scientists from North America. We have already received a commitment from the US Geological Survey for $5000. The USGS and US Fish and Wildlife Service are providing the meeting space at Patuxent for free. Participants, who are federal employees, will be expected to incur the costs of travel themselves. Scientists from our invited core group will have to certify that no other funds are available for their participation. We are also seeking to leverage funds from the EPA (Office of International Activities) and the Chesapeake Bay Program, as well as the foundations listed above. Through these means we believe we can leverage $25,000 of support from outside the NSF. 2006 Statement of Work: We intend to hold a 2 and ½ day workshop at the USGS, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, MD to facilitate participation from governmental agencies in the Washington, D.C. area, NSF, and the World Bank. The workshop format will entail both plenary sessions with speakers and break-out groups (4-5 people). Each break-out group, with specific discus¬sion objectives, will be led by a facilitator and will write a summary report. 2007 Statement of Work: Work will continue on writing report to NSF on the workshop Product: Report Planned Report, Planned: various, 2006, A White Paper that establishes the paradigms that would accelerate the development of this discipline and shape the quality and direction of research in urban ecology in its next decade of development will be prepared for Ecological Applications., Product: Workshops Planned Workshops, Planned: Various, 2006, The individual panel papers will appear in either the Journal of Applied Ecology or in Urban Ecosystems.,
Thanks to USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center for hosting this page for the USGS Biology Science Staff.
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