April 2014 All-Project Meeting: Discussing Theory as a Path to BES IV

It is something of a truism that in a Long-Term Ecological Research project that one is either preparing for a mid-term, external review, or preparing for a renewal proposal.  BES just had its mid-term review in October 2013.  That means we must now be preparing for the 2016 renewal proposal – and that is, in fact, the case.  

A Suite of Preparatory Activities

The activities we have undertaken this year – our quarterly All-Project Meetings, our book of the year, and our webinars on the structure and content of theory in BES are intended to help us prepare for the renewal proposal.  This is serious work, and everybody in BES ought to be involved in these activities.

We have had two webinars to date: 1) a discussion of chapters 1 and 2 in Scheiner and Willig’s (2011) Theory of Ecology, and 2) a discussion of a draft white paper on the theory of urban heterogeneity.  We have recorded these webinars for reference by those who were unable to attend.  Go here for Webinar 1 https://vimeo.com/89529855 and here for Webinar 2 http://vimeo.com/89746068.  The introductory PowerPoint for Webinar 2 is here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx-QKDoShVRkQmFEa25MQVB0YlU/.

The April Meeting as a Step toward BES IV.

The 8 April 2014, All-Project Meeting continues this work.  In it, we will discuss the theory of urban heterogeneity, examine the existing subtheories we employ, and explore alternative theoretical content, and specific research questions, especially those aimed at integration.  The meeting will incorporate new insights from many members of BES through discussions aimed at clarifying our theoretical structure, enhancing integration, and strategizing about our long-term data collection.

There is homework for the meeting.  

Please read or review the following materials.

Theory of Urban Heterogeneity
1. Cadenasso, M.L., E.J. Rosi-Marshall, S.T.A. Pickett, et al. TBD.  A Theory of Urban Heterogeneity: A Framework to Promote Integration and Hypothesis Generation for BES IV. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx-QKDoShVRkZFBnTGwwWHBEX28/edit?usp=sharing

Structure and Use of Ecological Theory
2.  Kolasa, J. 2011. Theory makes ecology evolve. Pages 21-49 in S. M. Scheiner and M. R. Willig, editors. The theory of ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

3. Scheiner, S. M. and M. R. Willig. 2011. A general theory of ecology. Pages 3-18 in S. M. Scheiner and M. R. Willig, editors. The theory of ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Metacommunity Theory
4. Leibold, M. A. 2011. The metacommunity concept and its theoretical underpinnings. Pages 163-183 in S. M. Scheiner and M. R. Willig, editors. The theory of ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

5. Swan, C. M., S. T. A. Pickett, K. Szlavecz, P. Warren, and K. T. Willey. 2011. Biodiversity and community composition in urban ecosystems: coupled human, spatial, and metacommunity processes. Pages 179-186 in J. Niemela, editor. Handbook of Urban Ecology. Oxford University Press, New York.

The River Continuum and the Urban Watershed Continuum
6. Kaushal, S.S., K.T. Belt. 2012. The urban watershed continuum: evolving spatial and temporal dimensions. Urban Ecosystems. 15:409-435. doi:10.1007/s11252-012-0226-7.

7. Vannote, R. L., G. W. Minshall, K. W. Cummins, J. R. Sedell, and C. E. Cushing. 1980. The river continuum concept. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 37:130-137.

Locational Choice
8. Irwin, Elena G., Kathleen P. Bell, Nancy E. Bockstael, David Newburn, Mark D. Partridge, JunJie Wu. 2009. “The economics of urban-rural space”Annual Review of Resource Economics, 1: 435-459.

9. Brasington, D. 2013. “Housing choice, residential mobility, and hedonic approaches.” In Fischer, M. and P. Nijkamp (ed.), Handbook of Regional Science, Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. 147-166

Agenda

Here's the agenda for the meeting, to be held in room 206 of the Technology Research Center building on the UMBC campus (5200 Westland Blvd
Baltimore, MD 21227):

8:30 am Coffee and welcome

9-9:15 am Overview of goals for the day and brief overview of the essay (See citation no. 1, above)

9:15-10 am Discussion of homework assignments

10-10:15 am Specific charge to the breakout groups

10:30-12 pm Breakout group session 1

Noon-1:30 pm Lunch on your own/with breakout groups

1:30-2:00 pm Report back from breakout groups

2:00-3:30 pm Breakout group session 2 “Mixing it up”

3:30-4:30 pm Report back from breakout groups and final thoughts

Worksheets

At the meeting we will use two worksheets to extend our thinking, integrative, and data strategies within the theoretical structure begun in the "heterogeneity essay" cited above.  Copies will be handed out at the meeting, but previews are available here:

Worksheet 1.  Identifying subtheories and BES long-term data that can be used to test theory.  If datasets are not being collected that you think would be useful, identify potential new datasets.

Worksheet 2: Identifying Specific Linkages/Interactions Among Subtheories

(a number of links have been provided, but please feel free to add more!)

Join the Meeting In Person or on the Web

The planning for the BES IV proposal has begun, and your contributions to that are crucial.  Be there or be square!  If you cannot attend the 8 April 2014 meeting in person, we encourage you to join via Go-To-Meeting.  The link to start the day at 9:00 a.m. is here: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/716973005  (To break the meeting recording into manageable chunks, we will generate separate links for the time periods after 10:30 a.m. EDT on that day.)

Baltimore Ecosystem Study: Renewal Proposal

The Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER renewal proposal was submitted for the February 1st 2010 deadline. This was a massive effort involving the contributions of more than forty researchers, educators, community practitioners, and administrative and information management staff. The proposal emerged from a series of meetings begun more than two years ago. These meetings, which have been discussed in previous posts, involved the entire BES community in identifying crucial measurements to continue, important research to add, and new strategies to better integrate our biogeophysical and social research approaches. Continuing conversations with our partners at various levels of government identified points of contact between their policy and management concerns and the emerging research and education plans.

The title of the proposal includes the phrase, “from sanitary to sustainable city,” in recognition of the emerging vision of sustainability in the world’s growing urban realm, and to help us better link with on the ground activities in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and the State of Maryland. We use the word city here to represent the entire city-suburb-exurban (CSE) system. The sanitary city identifies the present form and function of the CSE, with its separate, engineered systems and management by sector – housing, transport, waste, health, and so on. The sanitary city is the result of more than a century of efforts to overcome the negative effects of the industrial city and reduce the risks of contagion in dense agglomerations of people. The sanitary city achieved many of its local benefits by transferring waste downstream, downwind, or segregating disamenities in disempowered neighborhoods. The sustainable city seeks to meet environmental goals throughout its extent and beyond, while at the same time improving social conditions and economic opportunities. The move toward sustainability in systems reinforces the cross-disciplinary integration we seek by requiring attention to the environmental, the social, and the economic structures and processes in our study region.

A sustainability focus also encourages us to look to the future. An approach we will develop in cooperation with our partners in government and in communities is scenario building. This is a modeling technique that will explore alternative forms that change can take. Scenarios can be generated that explore responses to policies, or to projected environmental conditions. Policies thus become a part of the landscape we study as much as the effects of climate change or shifts in investment and human population.

We have spent more than a dozen years laying a firm foundation of understanding the structure and function of metropolitan Baltimore as a socio-ecological system. Our proposed new work aims to focus and refine our theoretical framework. The planning process identified three theoretical areas, each with its own disciplinary interest and motivation, but which we believe will also stimulate integration. One is locational choice theory for households and firms, which combines economic and social processes. The second is biological metacommunity theory adapted for CSE systems. The third is the urban stream dis/continuum concept, a version of the river continuum originally developed for non-urban watersheds. These three theories advance our existing concerns with socio-demographic structure and dynamics, with urban biodiversity, and with inhabited and infrastructurally invested watersheds. Linkages through the economics of decision making, feedbacks between biota and different scales of social features, and exposing the complexities of connection and disconnection in CSE watersheds are benefits that can emerge from these new theoretical foci.

For more information, we invite you to peruse our renewal proposal, available as a pdf here or as a zip file here.