Planning Meeting #4 for BES 3
“New Hydro-Ecological-Social Theory”
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM June 23rd, 2009
Preliminary Agenda
Meeting Goals
• Develop an intellectual framework for understanding the interaction between human communities, terrestrial landscapes, and the hydrologic system.
• Brainstorm new approaches for characterizing the state and condition of watersheds and streams and how future ecosystem functions and services may be altered in response to scenarios of watershed restoration, stormwater management, and sustainability initiatives
• Brainstorm new approaches for linking watershed land-use with processing of materials and energy along the urban Gwynns Falls river continuum
• Generate new research questions linking landscapes to streams and streams to receiving waters that are critical in developing and testing these frameworks
Organizing Questions
1. What are the ecosystem functions and services provided by a healthy hydrologic system?
2. What macro-scale land use factors have been found to be associated with impairment of watershed and stream functions and how do these vary across the urban-rural gradient? How might these change under climate change, sustainability initiatives, and watershed restoration practices?
3. What site-level factors drive and mediate both the physical and chemical processes that impair watersheds? What is the role of landscape design and restoration factors in facilitating or inhibiting impairment and influencing stream ecosystem functions and services?
4. What is the role of the urban river continuum in transporting and transforming ecological fluxes of energy and matter delivered from landscapes? Where are “hot spots” located along urban stream networks?
5. What are the social, economic, policy and planning factors that drive macro-scale land use patterns? How do these factors and the resulting land use pattern mediate the ability of the urban river continuum to process biogeochemicals at this scale?
6. What are the social, economic, policy and planning factors that drive site-scale land use and design? How do these factors and the resulting land use pattern mediate the ability of the urban river continuum to process biogeochemicals at this scale?
7. How can we develop a system to spatially characterize sites or parcels in terms of their contribution to hydrologic impairment, and watersheds and stream networks in terms of their expected level of impairment? What data and models are needed to generate scenarios of watershed change and corresponding changes in processing of materials and energy transported downstream?
Agenda
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Introduction and overview (Sujay and Austin)
9:10 Overview of renewal process (Steward Pickett)
9:20 Panelist presentations (15 minutes each; 10 minutes for talk, 5 minutes for questions):
Sujay Kaushal: Urban river continuum
Austin Troy: Integrating spatial methods and social research to address watershed processes
Larry Band: Headwater alterations in watersheds and links to downstream transport
Bill Stack: Managing materials and energy in urban streams: Emerging Questions
10:25 Large-group feedback on question 1.
10:45 Break
11:00 Break-out session 1: Groups 1 &2 address question 2; Groups 3 & 4 address question 3.
11:45 Present results and large-group feedback
12:15 Lunch
1:30 Kenneth Belt: Urban river continuum: Hydrology walk and talk
2:00 Break-out session 2: Groups 1&2 address question 4&5; Groups 3&4 address question 5&6
3:00 Present results and large-group feedback
3:30 Large group discussion of Question 7
4:30 Wrap up and synthesis of questions (Steward, Sujay, Austin)
5:00 Adjourn to picnic on BES lawn
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Discussion Questions for Land Change and Locational Choice Meeting
1. What aspects of land use and or land change (LU/LC) change is most important to you? What are the drivers? Impacts?
2. What are the relevant policies (existing, hypothetical)?
3. What does sustainability or resilience mean to you? How is it best defined/represented/modeled/operationalized?
4. What are the biggest challenges that cities will have to solve in the next 10/20/30 years?
2. What are the relevant policies (existing, hypothetical)?
3. What does sustainability or resilience mean to you? How is it best defined/represented/modeled/operationalized?
4. What are the biggest challenges that cities will have to solve in the next 10/20/30 years?
Food for Thought: Land Change and Locational Choice Meeting
BES Quarterly Meeting – Planning for Renewal – April 16, 2009
Topic: Land Change Scenarios and Locational Choice Modeling
Organizers: Elena Irwin and Mary Cadenasso
(1) What aspects of land use/land cover (LULC) change are the most important from your perspective? What are the drivers? What are the impacts?
The peri-urban fringe I suspect will continue to be the battleground for LULC and for lots of good reasons. No one likes conversion of pristine farmland or forests to suburban tracts (unless you are the developer or the person buying a house in the suburban tract, and then you want it to stop there). The waste and pollution associated with fragmented leap-frog development will mean a continued focus on the dynamic edge. But I want to make sure that the central city and older inner suburbs are not neglected. What is really important to me is how LULC impacts quality of life (livelihood, safety, security, happiness, health). It is also very important to show how LULC creates uneven consequences for city dwellers and to find ways to mitigate or rectify those inequities. Regarding drivers and impacts, I sent Elena a list a few months back that I think is a good synopsis. C. Boone
Changes in impervious surface and a measure of hydrologic connectivity (does water flow continuously to stream or have opportunity to infiltrate before reaching more impervious surface)
o Drivers: development (roads should be a separable category) and mitigation efforts
o Impacts: hydrologic and aquatic living resources degradation – e.g., loss of spawning and nursery habitat for resident and anadromous fish, loss of water quality treatment and quantity moderation
Changes in Forest Cover, with subcategories for forest buffers and wetlands
o Drivers: development, and mitigation efforts (reforestation/afforestation),
o Impacts: forest fragmentation/habitat loss, loss of forest cover = loss of ecosystems services – clean air, water, good hydrology, carbon, etc
Research needs are to support better data (either better products or techniques for measuring) and to link the land use data to resource conditions of concern, like excess nutrients or fish habitat. Social issues are relevant for the patterns of development, the drivers, and who feels the impacts in human health, safety, and welfare. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
From my perspective, land cover is the critical variable rather than land use because changes to land cover more directly influences ecosystem processes. I view changes to land use as an aggregated change that includes changes to cover and potentially to human action at that location. The consequences of human actions for ecosystem processes are most likely modulated by characteristics of land cover. Therefore, I view land cover as the most important indicator of potential impact to ecosystem processes.
At finer spatial scales, the change of land cover from pervious to impervious surfaces is critical for many ecological features of the system including heat dissipation, alteration to hydrology and the loss of “natural” or “green” space. These green spaces may be used by a variety of organisms or important for the regulation of ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling. At coarser scales, the important aspect shifts a bit for me to one of the spatial patterning of the change. Where on the landscape relative to other biogeophysical features such as slope, soil type, and vegetation characteristics is the land use/land cover change occurring? Also, how aggregated or disaggregated is the conversion relative to previously converted land or land yet to be converted?
Economic incentives or disincentives seem to be important drivers. This is all balled up for me with policies and levels of decision making. The choice of the individual is constrained by personal economics as well as economics and policy that drive higher levels of decision making by businesses, institutions and governments. “Choices” at all levels are constrained to a certain extent by biogeophysical features such as slope. Engineering strategies often allow development to skirt those constraints. On the other hand, biogeophysical features may provide opportunities such as ridgelines that offer views of surrounding landscapes making them more profitable for development.
Impacts are too numerous to consider and would be different for each characteristic of concern. Obviously there are impacts to air, water, health and how people spend their time and resources. Also important are impacts that may constrain future scenarios or available options. Mary Cadenasso
The pattern of land development—i.e., land converted from agriculture or a natural state to urban land use—in and around urban areas is a critical aspect of land use/land cover change. This form of development has led to major increases in per capita land consumption and in low density urban land use. In 1950, the conterminous United States had less than 1% of land at urban densities (more than one house per acre) and about 5% at exurban densities (between 1 and 40 acres per house); by 2000, these densities had grown to nearly 2% and 25% respectively (Brown et al. 2005).
Understanding the human behaviors and decision making processes that underlie land development is critical, as is an understanding of the ways in which individuals respond to policies that influence land use and location decisions. Land use patterns are the result of many, autonomous and heterogeneous individuals making location and land use decisions. What are the factors (land markets, policies, location, amenities, neighborhood quality) that influence individual location and land use decisions? How do these decisions vary across individuals and what sources of heterogeneity—e.g., income, race, education—matter the most? How do individuals’ location and land use decisions influence each other, e.g., how do changes in a neighborhood and the landscape around someone influence their decision to relocate? Looking at this from a political economy viewpoint, what influences policy makers? How do societal preferences influence what policy makers do or don’t do? What determines political pressure? These are not questions that I as an economist am equipped to answer, but they are critical questions.
A key question is: What are the connections between “inner urban” and “outer urban” changes? The City of Baltimore lost substantial population in the 1950s onward due to people moving out of the city and into the Baltimore suburbs. Where did people move from/to and why? How do these jurisdictions compete for good growth or interact in other ways? How has the loss of population in the City influenced the overall “health” or “sustainability” of the region? Elena Irwin
In thinking about vulnerability analysis, the most important aspects of land use/land cover change are those which result in higher levels of population exposure, reduce abilities to withstand exposure to a hazard or stress, and those which may diminish abilities to recover and capabilities to adapt to changing conditions. Usually, US environmental justice research investigates equity among groups and whether there are disproportionate, adverse impacts on low income and/or minority populations. Answering this question from an environmental justice perspective becomes more complicated if we consider the multiple normative standards of procedural and distributional justice, e.g. Rawlsian ideas of arranging inequalities so they maximize the benefit to the least well off, or utilitarian concepts focused on the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
The drivers of these processes are very diverse. In thinking about the intersection of vulnerability, climate change, and environmental justice, examples include:
• gentrification of coastal areas at risk to flooding and sea level rise;
• increases in impervious surfaces combined with factors such as poor housing quality, lack of social services, and neighborhood safety concerns could change the pattern of vulnerability and environmental justice concerns related to heat waves; and,
• land-use/cover changes that alter nutrient cycling and result in greater nutrient burdens on the Chesapeake Bay and shift risks and costs to other groups.
These examples only address the first-order impacts of potential climate changes. Other issues that involve complex linkages are much more difficult to anticipate. For instance, the factors driving the land cover changes could differ by parcel, neighborhood, and region within the city. Uneven investment in land use/land cover changes designed to mitigate environmental hazards, such as flood protection or development of green spaces, and uneven enforcement of regulations are potential driving forces of environmental justice concerns.
The draft white paper Larry and I have started from the earlier meeting offers some other ideas related to climate change and public or environmental disease and pest threats.
The impacts are typically measured by changes in exposure (number of people, property values, infrastructure at risk) to a particular hazard or stress. If the event occurs, measures of mortality, morbidity, emergency room visits, numbers of buildings damaged, presidential natural disaster declaration, claims against the National Flood Insurance Program, and public and private insurance claims are all standard measures. Issues of job loss, business failure, mental health consequences and increased levels of domestic abuse are widely acknowledged but less often measured. Kirsten Dow
(2) What does sustainability or resilience mean to you? How are these terms best defined, represented, modeled, operationalized in the context of cities and metropolitan regions?
A brief definition of sustainability is the simultaneous consideration of environmental, social, and economic variables in all our actions. I don't like the way that sustainability has shifted emphasis from the original conceptions of sustainable development, which put poverty reduction, human health and well-being as the central priority. Increasingly the social component is an afterthought. I also believe strongly that sustainability should be normative. It should not be about "keeping going" but finding a better way forward, one that includes concepts of justice and fairness. There are a variety of sustainability indicators that municipalities have developed. These are a beginning. But I think starting with a few, directly measurable variables would get cities moving in the right direction. If I had to pick a handful they would be: 1. percent living in poverty; 2. violent crime rate; 3. number of EPA non-attainment days; 4. racial/ethnic/income segregation index; 5. Emergency room visits for respiratory diseases; 6. a water quality measure (leave that for my ecology colleagues); 7. high-school graduation rate. C. Boone
Ability of an ecosystem to remain functional and to recover after a disturbance or while environmental factors are changing – for example, an ecological network of hubs and corridors (Green Infrastructure) provide habitat refugia and migratory corridors that are important for allowing species to adapt and move in response to climate change.
CONNECTIVITY is a key element of sustainability and resiliency. Look at context for metrics that build understanding of connectivity and context. Watershed resiliency can relate structure to function; watersheds can continue to have higher function if they are structured in the right way – all riparian zones and floodplains forested – large blocks of forest in upland areas – good stormwater control – this refers to creating resilient ecosystems for extreme flood and drought events anticipated now and getting more intense via climate change. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
Sustainability and resilience are similar in meaning for me though there is a slight and important difference. Sustainability is the ability of a system to maintain processes, functions, diversity, and productivity into the future with minimal effect on the environment. Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb a disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same identity, function and feedbacks. The nuanced differences between the two definitions may be that sustainability emphasizes lack of change to system structure in the face of use or extraction whereas resilience emphasizes dynamics and adaptability of the system in face of changing process both internal and external to the target system. For both sustainability and resilience it is often helpful to be more specific than simply to ask whether the system is sustainable or resilient. Specifics such as sustainable for what or for whom, etc.
These concepts are extremely difficult to represent, model or operationalize. They require an acceptance, if not an understanding, of change across multiple spatial and temporal scales. The changes are complex and affect and are affected by physical and social patterns and processes. This makes sustainability and resilience not only difficult to understand and study but also to regulate and requires a flexible management approach. Mary Cadenasso
Sustainability is concerned with some notion of sharing scarce resources across generations in some reasonable or equitable manner. Resilience is concerned with how resistant a particular “state” is given to external changes or shocks to the system. The “state” could be defined in terms of economic (e.g., growing, declining region) or social (e.g., segregated neighborhoods) or a type of land use pattern, e.g., sprawl. It could be a desirable state (healthy region) or an undesirable state (declining region). For example, the suburbs may be growing relative to the city, but how resilient is this growth to an economic shock (downturn in the economy, hike in gas prices) or other shocks (e.g., from policy or change in environmental conditions)? Resilience certainly has something to do with how well off a community is – with vibrant neighborhoods, good public services, etc. a neighborhood is clearly much more resilient than one without these resources.
Sustainability could be either a static or dynamic concept. Resilience is a dynamic concept. The two are related. For example, certain economic or social states in which the system is in, or the system is tending towards over time, can be more or less sustainable. There are many different possible states, some more likely than others. Suppose we identify a sustainable path for the metropolitan area in terms of the amount of land development and its pattern over the next several decades. How does this compare to where the region is now? How resilient is our current state? What sorts of changes (policies, regulations, incentives) may be needed to guide the system to the desired sustainable state? What are the costs and benefits of the different policy options (i.e., how costly is implementing the policies that would kick the system into a more sustainable state? What are the chances of success? What are the benefits if the policies are implemented? What are the consequences of maintaining the current state?)
All of these questions raise basic questions about how we can best evaluate sustainability and resilience. What are the factors/features of the Baltimore region that make it more or less sustainable and resilient? What factors should be counted and how should they be “added up”? The notion of ecosystem services is useful in this regard: ecosystems produce a variety of services that benefit people (at the most basic level, human life is dependent on these services). How are these services valued by people, e.g., what are the benefits that accrue to individuals, communities as a result of these services? Elena Irwin
Many times sustainability and resilience are defined as properties of systems, natural, social, or coupled human environment. In those cases, they refer to the ability of a system to either continue functioning over the long term with no specification of the variability, hazards are stresses or to maintain functioning following a perturbation or stress. From a perspective of vulnerability and environmental justice, I think it is necessary to look at sustainability and resilience with respect to marginal groups. To my knowledge, these marginal groups - poor, low income working people, elderly, minorities - are not typically identified as important in the modeling of systems, but circumstances resulting in disproportionate harm to any of them would be unjust.
With respect to next-generation of BES work, if we are going to approach sustainability and resilience in systems, I think it would be wise to include infrastructure systems. For example, the design of storm water systems is critical to the management of flooding in Baltimore. Is it adequate to meet potential future variability in precipitation and storm surges? Damage to infrastructure systems from natural hazards can have long-lasting and far-reaching social and economic consequences (e.g. New Orleans and Katrina; Flooding in Iowa 2008; California earthquakes). Being prepared to do immediate and long-tern studies of how resilience and adaptation occur following major climate-related events would provide a very rare and valuable data set. Kirsten Dow
(3) What are the biggest challenges that cities and metropolitan regions will face in the next 10, 20, 30 years?
One of the biggest challenges will be how to retrofit and redesign existing cities to be more sustainable. We cannot escape to the suburbs to solve the problems of the city, as Henry Ford once declared. Cities represent huge amounts of fixed capital (housing, other buildings, infrastructure) and human (and place) resources that in many cases is being underused. At some point, perhaps already passed, there will be renewed and growing interest in the old cores. It may be driven by potential return on investment, rising energy costs, demographic shifts (ageing population stranded in the suburbs), yearning for sense of place, or a host of other factors. Brownfields and abandoned houses cannot go on forever. Municipalities stand to gain huge efficiencies in redeveloping existing urban spaces rather than plowing under fields for new suburban growth. A related challenge will be to ensure that central cities can provide safe environments, excellent schools, and neighborhoods that are meaningful and welcoming. C. Boone
The biggest challenges will be the multiplicity of challenges. How issues of crime, economy, transit-oriented development, response to catastrophic events, failing urban infrastructure can all be dealt with simultaneously. Are there better decision paths for this that could support long-term environmental improvement that would not be funded on its own?
The climate change adaptation efforts may be a framework that makes us look at issues more interdependently, but it is still very difficult to implement them in a coordinated fashion with the multitude of players. Another approach may be principles of/building incentives for redevelopment, to avoid further sprawl and address the large existing environmental problems that new environmental regulations seldom address. The challenge for all cities is to recreate the urban environment – add more trees, gardens, open recreational places, trails, jobs, good schools, etc. Diversify the American dream – not the big house in the country, but the elegant, spacious urban penthouse or condominium that is safe and accessible to music, culture, good food, outdoor opportunities. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
One of the biggest challenges is planning for or managing a constantly changing system. The changes are happening within the system and are reactions or consequences of actions within the system, but there are also changes occurring at spatial and temporal scales coarser than the system that have to be accounted for. In addition, there is little certainty of the changes at the level of detail often sought to establish policies or programs. A large challenge may be to build regulatory structures that can accommodate changes across multiple characteristics, and spatial and temporal scales and do so in a socially equitable way. Establishing acceptable risk which cuts across physical and social concerns will be a challenge.
An additional challenge is retrofitting cities or dealing with the constraints and opportunities established by past events or decisions. Mary Cadenasso
Rising energy costs: urban regions will have to contend with rising energy costs and face questions about what the “least cost” ways are to reduce high energy consumption. This will require evaluating any number of different energy saving options in terms of the costs (what does it take in terms of capital, government investment to implement, what is the opportunity cost) and benefits (likely savings in the future).
Carbon emissions: Related to energy issues, cities are major sources of carbon. What impacts will federal policies that seek to reduce carbon emissions have on metropolitan areas?
Climate change: Others will be much more articulate than I on this topic. It is certainly an important challenge facing cities.
Intermetropolitan growth: The Baltimore region will continue to compete with other metro regions for the desirable growth (firms that bring jobs and that stimulate economic growth, high skilled workers). Baltimore is at a disadvantage relative to other metro regions (regional climate, older manufacturing city, poverty of central city). How will these factors and other factors shape this dynamic in the future? This has a lot to do with the evolution of other metro areas as well. Baltimore has a strong neighbor in Washington D.C. and has benefited from the outward growth of this metro area. How will this evolve in the future? Lang and Nelson (2007) discuss their predictions in terms of emergence of “megapolitan areas” in the U.S.—large regions that encompass more than one large city typically. They argue that economic interdependence extends beyond a single metro region and thus the future of urban management depends on understanding and managing the growth of these megapolitan areas. Baltimore is located with the area they call the Chesapeake megapolitan area, which includes Washington DC and Richmond VA as well.
Intrametropolitan growth and decline: The process of household sorting implies that regions will become more, not less, segregated over time. This arises from preferences that people have over wanting to be around people like them, regulatory constraints and policies that have fostered this, and also from feedbacks that reinforce growth of prosperous neighborhoods and decline of poorer neighborhoods. Like most metro areas, many areas of Baltimore are relatively segregated. How will these patterns evolve in the future? What are the implications for the overall sustainability of the region? How is inner urban change dependent on outer change? And how does inner impact outer urban change (and vice versa)? This could be a useful way to characterize issues of intrametropolitan growth, decline and equity. Also, the notion of “favored quarter”—i.e., the subregion within a metro where a disproportionate share of the growth flows—could be a useful. Elena Irwin
This is a hard question that involves some value judgments and assumptions about the pace of science as I understand it. With that disclaimer, let’s call these speculations shared among friends.
Cities and metropolitan regions will continue to face a wide variety of compelling social priorities and goals. Updating infrastructure and regulating land-use/cover will take place in the context of strong social and budgetary competition. Therefore, in the area of environmental management, I believe that developing robust, credible, legitimate models of decision-making under climate change uncertainty will be an important near-term 10-15 year challenge. The transition from environmental management strategies which are scientifically and legally justified based on an assumption of stationary of environmental processes across time to something based on dynamics and a different standard of evidence and proof will be a tremendous societal challenge in the US. The rapid pace of scientific advance around climate change issues will add to this challenge. Cities and metropolitan areas will be waiting on the state, federal, and perhaps international bodies for guidance, precedence, and rules. My rationale for identifying this issue among the biggest challenges includes: the likely degree of social controversy; the cross-scale institutional complexity in developing acceptable approaches to dealing with high uncertainty and high decisions stakes problems (see Ravetz and Funtowitz on post-normal science). I expect this issue will be prominent in land use planning efforts and controversies related to climate adaptation.
This is just my back of the envelope calculation, but over the 20 to 30 year time frame, I expect that some key uncertainties about climate change threats will be better characterized on a regional level if not reduced. If that is right, levels of uncertainty and decisions stakes around some urban environmental management issues be within a range that allow for the use of more familiar engineering and expert judgment practices for dealing with uncertainty that will facilitate more action on adaptation. Kirsten Dow
(4) What are the relevant policies (existing and potential) that are needed to address current and future challenges?
Existing:
o Clean Water Act:
Total Maximum Daily Load limits for streams and Bay- existing and under development (nutrients, sediment, biological, bacterial, mercury….)
Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System Permits (MS4)- existing and increasingly detailed
Antidegradation (Tier II Waters)- partly located not yet regulated
o Clean Air Act:
Air Quality State Implementation Plans- Ozone, others
Maryland Climate Action Plan
o Maryland Planning Requirements
Sensitive Areas
Water Resources Element
Land Protection, Park, and Recreation Plans
Hypothetical:
o Large blocks of forest should be considered critical habitat and have greater levels of protection,
o Impervious surface fees should be developed,
o Ecosystem markets should be developed (may require governmental regulation) to develop high quality mitigation banks for forests (FIDS), habitat, wetlands, etc…..
Research can help improve the effectiveness of actions and investments of public funding that will be required to be spent over the next decade to address existing problems.
The research need is to develop metrics that can better support workable land use planning, regulation, and markets. Where and how much reduction of impervious surface, stormwater retrofits, and increase in forest cover will make a difference to nutrient reduction or aquatic health? Neither enforcement nor ecosystem markets work well unless metrics are clear and meaningful. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
Having no expertise in this area, I make these suggestions in the spirit of dialog. I think we need to continue moving along the path of regional planning and management. Perhaps the “boundaries” of systems need to be multiple, depending on what is being planned or regulated for. The multiple boundaries can be drawn to coincide with the spatial or temporal scale of the anticipated dynamic (e.g. flooding) or to coincide with the structural features or extents (e.g. commuting distances). I’m suggesting fluid boundaries that shift depending on the issue. Because the future challenges are also fluid, policies and programs that are flexible and can incorporate learning from past efforts would seem to be key. This is different from being open to admitting failure but rather recognizing that all decisions or actions are embedded within a specific context that will shift, requiring a reassessment of the original decisions and actions and a willingness to change course as new lessons or insights are gained.
Mary Cadenasso
On a general level, we need policies that will change individuals’ behaviors and actions in ways that lead to improvements in sustainability and the resilience of sustainable states (and likewise, decreases in the resilience of unsustainable states). So in order to answer this question effectively, we need to know: (1) how are current or hypothetical changes in policy likely to change individual choices? How will different people respond differently and why? (2) how will the metrics by which improvements are measures (sustainability, ecosystem services, distribution of resources, resilience of the system) change as a cumulative result of individual responses to policy? (3) What are the costs of the human impacts on ecosystem services? What are the costs of various policies aimed at altering behaviors?
More specifically, policies should be targeted to central city, suburbs, exurbs and the social/economic/ political role that each play. Also, we need policies to coordinate across these different areas of the metro region to incorporate the interdependencies among them. For example, central cities should foster creativity and innovation; investments are needed to prevent to onset of decay. Also, it would be useful to better understand the right timing of investments in central city neighborhoods, e.g., what is the optimal time to invest in revitalizing a dying neighborhood , e.g., in terms of tearing down vacant structures and investing in new or renovated housing that can attract new residents—this has to do with understanding the potential demand for this kind of redevelopment. Suburbs house the majority of metro residences and provide the majority of the metro jobs and thus have most of the “assets” of the metro. While they are semi-autonomous from central cities, their well-being is also dependent on the well-being of the entire metro, which is determined by the central city and exurbs as well as suburbs. Exurbs contain many of the ecological assets of the metro, e.g., forested areas that provide a sink for carbon. However, they also generate nutrients that contribute to water quality problems. Policies should be designed to encourage exurbs to invest in the metro’s ecological resources and the rural landscape.
References
Brown DG, Johnson KM, Loveland TR, Theobald DM. 2005. Rural land use trends in the contemporaneous United States 1950-2000. Ecological Applications 15(6): 1851-1863.
Land, R, Nelson AC. 2007. Beyond the Metroplex: Examining Commuter Patterns at the “Megapolitan” Scale. Lincoln Institute for Land Policy Working Paper WP07RL1. Elena Irwin
This is another hard, interesting question and I am sorry I will miss the discussion of it. Reasonable people disagree about many aspects of what represents needed policy for climate change. I think there is increasing broad support for efforts directed to building adaptive capacity or social learning across agencies and organizations at different levels to assure that needed new information on climate-related issues is collected, the capacity exists to interpret the information, and flexibility to act on information. Some would advocate a strong precautionary principle approach and make efforts to reduce GHG emissions. Others may interpret that precautionary approach as calling for what is termed a “no regrets strategy,” or focusing on efforts that reduce current risks and will have long-term positive consequences. One can imagine several land-use/ land cover strategies that would meet this criterion. Several participants in adaptation processes have pointed out that climate change efforts will need to be "mainstreamed" into other policy agendas. For instance, decreasing the urban heat island effect within the city would support energy and economic efficiency as well as broader sustainability agendas. Kirsten Dow
Topic: Land Change Scenarios and Locational Choice Modeling
Organizers: Elena Irwin and Mary Cadenasso
(1) What aspects of land use/land cover (LULC) change are the most important from your perspective? What are the drivers? What are the impacts?
The peri-urban fringe I suspect will continue to be the battleground for LULC and for lots of good reasons. No one likes conversion of pristine farmland or forests to suburban tracts (unless you are the developer or the person buying a house in the suburban tract, and then you want it to stop there). The waste and pollution associated with fragmented leap-frog development will mean a continued focus on the dynamic edge. But I want to make sure that the central city and older inner suburbs are not neglected. What is really important to me is how LULC impacts quality of life (livelihood, safety, security, happiness, health). It is also very important to show how LULC creates uneven consequences for city dwellers and to find ways to mitigate or rectify those inequities. Regarding drivers and impacts, I sent Elena a list a few months back that I think is a good synopsis. C. Boone
Changes in impervious surface and a measure of hydrologic connectivity (does water flow continuously to stream or have opportunity to infiltrate before reaching more impervious surface)
o Drivers: development (roads should be a separable category) and mitigation efforts
o Impacts: hydrologic and aquatic living resources degradation – e.g., loss of spawning and nursery habitat for resident and anadromous fish, loss of water quality treatment and quantity moderation
Changes in Forest Cover, with subcategories for forest buffers and wetlands
o Drivers: development, and mitigation efforts (reforestation/afforestation),
o Impacts: forest fragmentation/habitat loss, loss of forest cover = loss of ecosystems services – clean air, water, good hydrology, carbon, etc
Research needs are to support better data (either better products or techniques for measuring) and to link the land use data to resource conditions of concern, like excess nutrients or fish habitat. Social issues are relevant for the patterns of development, the drivers, and who feels the impacts in human health, safety, and welfare. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
From my perspective, land cover is the critical variable rather than land use because changes to land cover more directly influences ecosystem processes. I view changes to land use as an aggregated change that includes changes to cover and potentially to human action at that location. The consequences of human actions for ecosystem processes are most likely modulated by characteristics of land cover. Therefore, I view land cover as the most important indicator of potential impact to ecosystem processes.
At finer spatial scales, the change of land cover from pervious to impervious surfaces is critical for many ecological features of the system including heat dissipation, alteration to hydrology and the loss of “natural” or “green” space. These green spaces may be used by a variety of organisms or important for the regulation of ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling. At coarser scales, the important aspect shifts a bit for me to one of the spatial patterning of the change. Where on the landscape relative to other biogeophysical features such as slope, soil type, and vegetation characteristics is the land use/land cover change occurring? Also, how aggregated or disaggregated is the conversion relative to previously converted land or land yet to be converted?
Economic incentives or disincentives seem to be important drivers. This is all balled up for me with policies and levels of decision making. The choice of the individual is constrained by personal economics as well as economics and policy that drive higher levels of decision making by businesses, institutions and governments. “Choices” at all levels are constrained to a certain extent by biogeophysical features such as slope. Engineering strategies often allow development to skirt those constraints. On the other hand, biogeophysical features may provide opportunities such as ridgelines that offer views of surrounding landscapes making them more profitable for development.
Impacts are too numerous to consider and would be different for each characteristic of concern. Obviously there are impacts to air, water, health and how people spend their time and resources. Also important are impacts that may constrain future scenarios or available options. Mary Cadenasso
The pattern of land development—i.e., land converted from agriculture or a natural state to urban land use—in and around urban areas is a critical aspect of land use/land cover change. This form of development has led to major increases in per capita land consumption and in low density urban land use. In 1950, the conterminous United States had less than 1% of land at urban densities (more than one house per acre) and about 5% at exurban densities (between 1 and 40 acres per house); by 2000, these densities had grown to nearly 2% and 25% respectively (Brown et al. 2005).
Understanding the human behaviors and decision making processes that underlie land development is critical, as is an understanding of the ways in which individuals respond to policies that influence land use and location decisions. Land use patterns are the result of many, autonomous and heterogeneous individuals making location and land use decisions. What are the factors (land markets, policies, location, amenities, neighborhood quality) that influence individual location and land use decisions? How do these decisions vary across individuals and what sources of heterogeneity—e.g., income, race, education—matter the most? How do individuals’ location and land use decisions influence each other, e.g., how do changes in a neighborhood and the landscape around someone influence their decision to relocate? Looking at this from a political economy viewpoint, what influences policy makers? How do societal preferences influence what policy makers do or don’t do? What determines political pressure? These are not questions that I as an economist am equipped to answer, but they are critical questions.
A key question is: What are the connections between “inner urban” and “outer urban” changes? The City of Baltimore lost substantial population in the 1950s onward due to people moving out of the city and into the Baltimore suburbs. Where did people move from/to and why? How do these jurisdictions compete for good growth or interact in other ways? How has the loss of population in the City influenced the overall “health” or “sustainability” of the region? Elena Irwin
In thinking about vulnerability analysis, the most important aspects of land use/land cover change are those which result in higher levels of population exposure, reduce abilities to withstand exposure to a hazard or stress, and those which may diminish abilities to recover and capabilities to adapt to changing conditions. Usually, US environmental justice research investigates equity among groups and whether there are disproportionate, adverse impacts on low income and/or minority populations. Answering this question from an environmental justice perspective becomes more complicated if we consider the multiple normative standards of procedural and distributional justice, e.g. Rawlsian ideas of arranging inequalities so they maximize the benefit to the least well off, or utilitarian concepts focused on the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
The drivers of these processes are very diverse. In thinking about the intersection of vulnerability, climate change, and environmental justice, examples include:
• gentrification of coastal areas at risk to flooding and sea level rise;
• increases in impervious surfaces combined with factors such as poor housing quality, lack of social services, and neighborhood safety concerns could change the pattern of vulnerability and environmental justice concerns related to heat waves; and,
• land-use/cover changes that alter nutrient cycling and result in greater nutrient burdens on the Chesapeake Bay and shift risks and costs to other groups.
These examples only address the first-order impacts of potential climate changes. Other issues that involve complex linkages are much more difficult to anticipate. For instance, the factors driving the land cover changes could differ by parcel, neighborhood, and region within the city. Uneven investment in land use/land cover changes designed to mitigate environmental hazards, such as flood protection or development of green spaces, and uneven enforcement of regulations are potential driving forces of environmental justice concerns.
The draft white paper Larry and I have started from the earlier meeting offers some other ideas related to climate change and public or environmental disease and pest threats.
The impacts are typically measured by changes in exposure (number of people, property values, infrastructure at risk) to a particular hazard or stress. If the event occurs, measures of mortality, morbidity, emergency room visits, numbers of buildings damaged, presidential natural disaster declaration, claims against the National Flood Insurance Program, and public and private insurance claims are all standard measures. Issues of job loss, business failure, mental health consequences and increased levels of domestic abuse are widely acknowledged but less often measured. Kirsten Dow
(2) What does sustainability or resilience mean to you? How are these terms best defined, represented, modeled, operationalized in the context of cities and metropolitan regions?
A brief definition of sustainability is the simultaneous consideration of environmental, social, and economic variables in all our actions. I don't like the way that sustainability has shifted emphasis from the original conceptions of sustainable development, which put poverty reduction, human health and well-being as the central priority. Increasingly the social component is an afterthought. I also believe strongly that sustainability should be normative. It should not be about "keeping going" but finding a better way forward, one that includes concepts of justice and fairness. There are a variety of sustainability indicators that municipalities have developed. These are a beginning. But I think starting with a few, directly measurable variables would get cities moving in the right direction. If I had to pick a handful they would be: 1. percent living in poverty; 2. violent crime rate; 3. number of EPA non-attainment days; 4. racial/ethnic/income segregation index; 5. Emergency room visits for respiratory diseases; 6. a water quality measure (leave that for my ecology colleagues); 7. high-school graduation rate. C. Boone
Ability of an ecosystem to remain functional and to recover after a disturbance or while environmental factors are changing – for example, an ecological network of hubs and corridors (Green Infrastructure) provide habitat refugia and migratory corridors that are important for allowing species to adapt and move in response to climate change.
CONNECTIVITY is a key element of sustainability and resiliency. Look at context for metrics that build understanding of connectivity and context. Watershed resiliency can relate structure to function; watersheds can continue to have higher function if they are structured in the right way – all riparian zones and floodplains forested – large blocks of forest in upland areas – good stormwater control – this refers to creating resilient ecosystems for extreme flood and drought events anticipated now and getting more intense via climate change. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
Sustainability and resilience are similar in meaning for me though there is a slight and important difference. Sustainability is the ability of a system to maintain processes, functions, diversity, and productivity into the future with minimal effect on the environment. Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb a disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same identity, function and feedbacks. The nuanced differences between the two definitions may be that sustainability emphasizes lack of change to system structure in the face of use or extraction whereas resilience emphasizes dynamics and adaptability of the system in face of changing process both internal and external to the target system. For both sustainability and resilience it is often helpful to be more specific than simply to ask whether the system is sustainable or resilient. Specifics such as sustainable for what or for whom, etc.
These concepts are extremely difficult to represent, model or operationalize. They require an acceptance, if not an understanding, of change across multiple spatial and temporal scales. The changes are complex and affect and are affected by physical and social patterns and processes. This makes sustainability and resilience not only difficult to understand and study but also to regulate and requires a flexible management approach. Mary Cadenasso
Sustainability is concerned with some notion of sharing scarce resources across generations in some reasonable or equitable manner. Resilience is concerned with how resistant a particular “state” is given to external changes or shocks to the system. The “state” could be defined in terms of economic (e.g., growing, declining region) or social (e.g., segregated neighborhoods) or a type of land use pattern, e.g., sprawl. It could be a desirable state (healthy region) or an undesirable state (declining region). For example, the suburbs may be growing relative to the city, but how resilient is this growth to an economic shock (downturn in the economy, hike in gas prices) or other shocks (e.g., from policy or change in environmental conditions)? Resilience certainly has something to do with how well off a community is – with vibrant neighborhoods, good public services, etc. a neighborhood is clearly much more resilient than one without these resources.
Sustainability could be either a static or dynamic concept. Resilience is a dynamic concept. The two are related. For example, certain economic or social states in which the system is in, or the system is tending towards over time, can be more or less sustainable. There are many different possible states, some more likely than others. Suppose we identify a sustainable path for the metropolitan area in terms of the amount of land development and its pattern over the next several decades. How does this compare to where the region is now? How resilient is our current state? What sorts of changes (policies, regulations, incentives) may be needed to guide the system to the desired sustainable state? What are the costs and benefits of the different policy options (i.e., how costly is implementing the policies that would kick the system into a more sustainable state? What are the chances of success? What are the benefits if the policies are implemented? What are the consequences of maintaining the current state?)
All of these questions raise basic questions about how we can best evaluate sustainability and resilience. What are the factors/features of the Baltimore region that make it more or less sustainable and resilient? What factors should be counted and how should they be “added up”? The notion of ecosystem services is useful in this regard: ecosystems produce a variety of services that benefit people (at the most basic level, human life is dependent on these services). How are these services valued by people, e.g., what are the benefits that accrue to individuals, communities as a result of these services? Elena Irwin
Many times sustainability and resilience are defined as properties of systems, natural, social, or coupled human environment. In those cases, they refer to the ability of a system to either continue functioning over the long term with no specification of the variability, hazards are stresses or to maintain functioning following a perturbation or stress. From a perspective of vulnerability and environmental justice, I think it is necessary to look at sustainability and resilience with respect to marginal groups. To my knowledge, these marginal groups - poor, low income working people, elderly, minorities - are not typically identified as important in the modeling of systems, but circumstances resulting in disproportionate harm to any of them would be unjust.
With respect to next-generation of BES work, if we are going to approach sustainability and resilience in systems, I think it would be wise to include infrastructure systems. For example, the design of storm water systems is critical to the management of flooding in Baltimore. Is it adequate to meet potential future variability in precipitation and storm surges? Damage to infrastructure systems from natural hazards can have long-lasting and far-reaching social and economic consequences (e.g. New Orleans and Katrina; Flooding in Iowa 2008; California earthquakes). Being prepared to do immediate and long-tern studies of how resilience and adaptation occur following major climate-related events would provide a very rare and valuable data set. Kirsten Dow
(3) What are the biggest challenges that cities and metropolitan regions will face in the next 10, 20, 30 years?
One of the biggest challenges will be how to retrofit and redesign existing cities to be more sustainable. We cannot escape to the suburbs to solve the problems of the city, as Henry Ford once declared. Cities represent huge amounts of fixed capital (housing, other buildings, infrastructure) and human (and place) resources that in many cases is being underused. At some point, perhaps already passed, there will be renewed and growing interest in the old cores. It may be driven by potential return on investment, rising energy costs, demographic shifts (ageing population stranded in the suburbs), yearning for sense of place, or a host of other factors. Brownfields and abandoned houses cannot go on forever. Municipalities stand to gain huge efficiencies in redeveloping existing urban spaces rather than plowing under fields for new suburban growth. A related challenge will be to ensure that central cities can provide safe environments, excellent schools, and neighborhoods that are meaningful and welcoming. C. Boone
The biggest challenges will be the multiplicity of challenges. How issues of crime, economy, transit-oriented development, response to catastrophic events, failing urban infrastructure can all be dealt with simultaneously. Are there better decision paths for this that could support long-term environmental improvement that would not be funded on its own?
The climate change adaptation efforts may be a framework that makes us look at issues more interdependently, but it is still very difficult to implement them in a coordinated fashion with the multitude of players. Another approach may be principles of/building incentives for redevelopment, to avoid further sprawl and address the large existing environmental problems that new environmental regulations seldom address. The challenge for all cities is to recreate the urban environment – add more trees, gardens, open recreational places, trails, jobs, good schools, etc. Diversify the American dream – not the big house in the country, but the elegant, spacious urban penthouse or condominium that is safe and accessible to music, culture, good food, outdoor opportunities. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
One of the biggest challenges is planning for or managing a constantly changing system. The changes are happening within the system and are reactions or consequences of actions within the system, but there are also changes occurring at spatial and temporal scales coarser than the system that have to be accounted for. In addition, there is little certainty of the changes at the level of detail often sought to establish policies or programs. A large challenge may be to build regulatory structures that can accommodate changes across multiple characteristics, and spatial and temporal scales and do so in a socially equitable way. Establishing acceptable risk which cuts across physical and social concerns will be a challenge.
An additional challenge is retrofitting cities or dealing with the constraints and opportunities established by past events or decisions. Mary Cadenasso
Rising energy costs: urban regions will have to contend with rising energy costs and face questions about what the “least cost” ways are to reduce high energy consumption. This will require evaluating any number of different energy saving options in terms of the costs (what does it take in terms of capital, government investment to implement, what is the opportunity cost) and benefits (likely savings in the future).
Carbon emissions: Related to energy issues, cities are major sources of carbon. What impacts will federal policies that seek to reduce carbon emissions have on metropolitan areas?
Climate change: Others will be much more articulate than I on this topic. It is certainly an important challenge facing cities.
Intermetropolitan growth: The Baltimore region will continue to compete with other metro regions for the desirable growth (firms that bring jobs and that stimulate economic growth, high skilled workers). Baltimore is at a disadvantage relative to other metro regions (regional climate, older manufacturing city, poverty of central city). How will these factors and other factors shape this dynamic in the future? This has a lot to do with the evolution of other metro areas as well. Baltimore has a strong neighbor in Washington D.C. and has benefited from the outward growth of this metro area. How will this evolve in the future? Lang and Nelson (2007) discuss their predictions in terms of emergence of “megapolitan areas” in the U.S.—large regions that encompass more than one large city typically. They argue that economic interdependence extends beyond a single metro region and thus the future of urban management depends on understanding and managing the growth of these megapolitan areas. Baltimore is located with the area they call the Chesapeake megapolitan area, which includes Washington DC and Richmond VA as well.
Intrametropolitan growth and decline: The process of household sorting implies that regions will become more, not less, segregated over time. This arises from preferences that people have over wanting to be around people like them, regulatory constraints and policies that have fostered this, and also from feedbacks that reinforce growth of prosperous neighborhoods and decline of poorer neighborhoods. Like most metro areas, many areas of Baltimore are relatively segregated. How will these patterns evolve in the future? What are the implications for the overall sustainability of the region? How is inner urban change dependent on outer change? And how does inner impact outer urban change (and vice versa)? This could be a useful way to characterize issues of intrametropolitan growth, decline and equity. Also, the notion of “favored quarter”—i.e., the subregion within a metro where a disproportionate share of the growth flows—could be a useful. Elena Irwin
This is a hard question that involves some value judgments and assumptions about the pace of science as I understand it. With that disclaimer, let’s call these speculations shared among friends.
Cities and metropolitan regions will continue to face a wide variety of compelling social priorities and goals. Updating infrastructure and regulating land-use/cover will take place in the context of strong social and budgetary competition. Therefore, in the area of environmental management, I believe that developing robust, credible, legitimate models of decision-making under climate change uncertainty will be an important near-term 10-15 year challenge. The transition from environmental management strategies which are scientifically and legally justified based on an assumption of stationary of environmental processes across time to something based on dynamics and a different standard of evidence and proof will be a tremendous societal challenge in the US. The rapid pace of scientific advance around climate change issues will add to this challenge. Cities and metropolitan areas will be waiting on the state, federal, and perhaps international bodies for guidance, precedence, and rules. My rationale for identifying this issue among the biggest challenges includes: the likely degree of social controversy; the cross-scale institutional complexity in developing acceptable approaches to dealing with high uncertainty and high decisions stakes problems (see Ravetz and Funtowitz on post-normal science). I expect this issue will be prominent in land use planning efforts and controversies related to climate adaptation.
This is just my back of the envelope calculation, but over the 20 to 30 year time frame, I expect that some key uncertainties about climate change threats will be better characterized on a regional level if not reduced. If that is right, levels of uncertainty and decisions stakes around some urban environmental management issues be within a range that allow for the use of more familiar engineering and expert judgment practices for dealing with uncertainty that will facilitate more action on adaptation. Kirsten Dow
(4) What are the relevant policies (existing and potential) that are needed to address current and future challenges?
Existing:
o Clean Water Act:
Total Maximum Daily Load limits for streams and Bay- existing and under development (nutrients, sediment, biological, bacterial, mercury….)
Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System Permits (MS4)- existing and increasingly detailed
Antidegradation (Tier II Waters)- partly located not yet regulated
o Clean Air Act:
Air Quality State Implementation Plans- Ozone, others
Maryland Climate Action Plan
o Maryland Planning Requirements
Sensitive Areas
Water Resources Element
Land Protection, Park, and Recreation Plans
Hypothetical:
o Large blocks of forest should be considered critical habitat and have greater levels of protection,
o Impervious surface fees should be developed,
o Ecosystem markets should be developed (may require governmental regulation) to develop high quality mitigation banks for forests (FIDS), habitat, wetlands, etc…..
Research can help improve the effectiveness of actions and investments of public funding that will be required to be spent over the next decade to address existing problems.
The research need is to develop metrics that can better support workable land use planning, regulation, and markets. Where and how much reduction of impervious surface, stormwater retrofits, and increase in forest cover will make a difference to nutrient reduction or aquatic health? Neither enforcement nor ecosystem markets work well unless metrics are clear and meaningful. Anne Hairston-Strang and Christine Conn
Having no expertise in this area, I make these suggestions in the spirit of dialog. I think we need to continue moving along the path of regional planning and management. Perhaps the “boundaries” of systems need to be multiple, depending on what is being planned or regulated for. The multiple boundaries can be drawn to coincide with the spatial or temporal scale of the anticipated dynamic (e.g. flooding) or to coincide with the structural features or extents (e.g. commuting distances). I’m suggesting fluid boundaries that shift depending on the issue. Because the future challenges are also fluid, policies and programs that are flexible and can incorporate learning from past efforts would seem to be key. This is different from being open to admitting failure but rather recognizing that all decisions or actions are embedded within a specific context that will shift, requiring a reassessment of the original decisions and actions and a willingness to change course as new lessons or insights are gained.
Mary Cadenasso
On a general level, we need policies that will change individuals’ behaviors and actions in ways that lead to improvements in sustainability and the resilience of sustainable states (and likewise, decreases in the resilience of unsustainable states). So in order to answer this question effectively, we need to know: (1) how are current or hypothetical changes in policy likely to change individual choices? How will different people respond differently and why? (2) how will the metrics by which improvements are measures (sustainability, ecosystem services, distribution of resources, resilience of the system) change as a cumulative result of individual responses to policy? (3) What are the costs of the human impacts on ecosystem services? What are the costs of various policies aimed at altering behaviors?
More specifically, policies should be targeted to central city, suburbs, exurbs and the social/economic/ political role that each play. Also, we need policies to coordinate across these different areas of the metro region to incorporate the interdependencies among them. For example, central cities should foster creativity and innovation; investments are needed to prevent to onset of decay. Also, it would be useful to better understand the right timing of investments in central city neighborhoods, e.g., what is the optimal time to invest in revitalizing a dying neighborhood , e.g., in terms of tearing down vacant structures and investing in new or renovated housing that can attract new residents—this has to do with understanding the potential demand for this kind of redevelopment. Suburbs house the majority of metro residences and provide the majority of the metro jobs and thus have most of the “assets” of the metro. While they are semi-autonomous from central cities, their well-being is also dependent on the well-being of the entire metro, which is determined by the central city and exurbs as well as suburbs. Exurbs contain many of the ecological assets of the metro, e.g., forested areas that provide a sink for carbon. However, they also generate nutrients that contribute to water quality problems. Policies should be designed to encourage exurbs to invest in the metro’s ecological resources and the rural landscape.
References
Brown DG, Johnson KM, Loveland TR, Theobald DM. 2005. Rural land use trends in the contemporaneous United States 1950-2000. Ecological Applications 15(6): 1851-1863.
Land, R, Nelson AC. 2007. Beyond the Metroplex: Examining Commuter Patterns at the “Megapolitan” Scale. Lincoln Institute for Land Policy Working Paper WP07RL1. Elena Irwin
This is another hard, interesting question and I am sorry I will miss the discussion of it. Reasonable people disagree about many aspects of what represents needed policy for climate change. I think there is increasing broad support for efforts directed to building adaptive capacity or social learning across agencies and organizations at different levels to assure that needed new information on climate-related issues is collected, the capacity exists to interpret the information, and flexibility to act on information. Some would advocate a strong precautionary principle approach and make efforts to reduce GHG emissions. Others may interpret that precautionary approach as calling for what is termed a “no regrets strategy,” or focusing on efforts that reduce current risks and will have long-term positive consequences. One can imagine several land-use/ land cover strategies that would meet this criterion. Several participants in adaptation processes have pointed out that climate change efforts will need to be "mainstreamed" into other policy agendas. For instance, decreasing the urban heat island effect within the city would support energy and economic efficiency as well as broader sustainability agendas. Kirsten Dow
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Keeping up in BES
This year, I will focus here on activities related to the preparation of our renewal proposal for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. We anticipate the proposal will be due in early 2010.
But there are many important and interesting things going on in BES besides our planning for the renewal.
One of them is the launch of our Education Newsletter. You can find that at http://beslter.org/frame5-page_8.html Alternatively, it appears under the "Education" menu on the main page of the BES web site.
I also encourage people to check the "What's New at BES?" link right in the middle of the main BES web page. You'll see a date beneath the link letting you know when it was last updated.
If you have any materials that you would like to share with the larger BES community through our website, please send them to Holly Beyar, Project Facilitator at beyarh@caryinstitute.org
But there are many important and interesting things going on in BES besides our planning for the renewal.
One of them is the launch of our Education Newsletter. You can find that at http://beslter.org/frame5-page_8.html Alternatively, it appears under the "Education" menu on the main page of the BES web site.
I also encourage people to check the "What's New at BES?" link right in the middle of the main BES web page. You'll see a date beneath the link letting you know when it was last updated.
If you have any materials that you would like to share with the larger BES community through our website, please send them to Holly Beyar, Project Facilitator at beyarh@caryinstitute.org
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
BES April 16 Planning Meeting
All researchers, educators, and collaborators of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study are encouraged to attend the next in our series of planning meetings for the 2010 renewal proposal.
Planning Meeting #3 for BES 3
“Land Change Scenario and Locational Choice Modeling”
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM April 16, 2009
Technology Research Center, UMBC Campus
Leaders: M.L. Cadenasso and E. G. Irwin
Goals
• Lay the groundwork for identifying key research questions that can motivate and guide our development of new spatial models of urban social-ecological systems (SES’s) for BES 3. The modeling approach would seek to explain spatially heterogeneous land use/cover dynamics as an integrated system that evolves as a result of human decisionmaking, ecological functioning and biophysical processes over multiple spatial and temporal scales. The approach would account for interactions among these processes that occur within and across different scales, as well as other feedback effects and constraints that influence land use/cover outcomes. It would also seek to quantify and understand the emergence of system-level properties such as sustainability and resilience.
• Facilitate discussion of key management goals for urban SES’s, e.g., sustainability, resilience, adaptive capacity. What do these things mean in the context of the BES program? How have these concepts been formalized in the literature? Are there predictive theories or testable hypotheses? How could BES 3 make progress on formalizing, developing and empirically modeling/testing these theories? Local governments within the BES study region (including the City of Baltimore and Baltimore County) and the State of Maryland are engaged in sustainability efforts. How can BES models complement and inform these efforts?
• Link our discussion of questions and models to discussion from previous meeting on climate change and environmental justice and suggest potential hooks to future meetings.
• Identify how we can build on existing data and research, modifications that are needed to existing data collection efforts, new data collection efforts that are needed
• Link our discussion to ISSE framework (see Figure 1). This is represented by the following conceptual diagram and the “six question” format that links human and ecological systems:
1. How do long-term press disturbances and short-term pulse disturbances interact to alter ecosystem structure and function?
2. How can biotic structure be both a cause and a consequence of ecological fluxes of energy and matter?
3. How do altered ecosystem dynamics affect ecosystem services?
4. How do changes in vital ecosystem services alter human outcomes?
5. How do perceptions and outcomes affect human behavior?
6. Which human actions influence the frequency, magnitude, or form of press and pulse disturbance regimes across ecosystems, and what determines these human actions?
Tentative agenda
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Introduction and overview (Mary and Elena)
9:10 Overview of renewal process (Steward)
9:20 Guided discussion #1: Urban spatial models of land use change and location choice (Elena)
10:10 Guided discussion #2: Ecological models of spatial heterogeneity and patch dynamics (Mary)
11:00 Break
11:15 Guided discussion #3: Management goals for urban SES’s
12:15 Individual response exercise: ask each participant to write down what they think the key research questions are; turn in responses before going to lunch
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Synthesis of key research questions with full group and formation of breakout groups
2:00 Breakout groups (by research question) respond to a series of tasks (guided by white paper format):
(i) Provide clear statement of research question and motivation for this question
(ii) Articulate key processes, scales, feedbacks and constraints that need to be studied in order to address research question
(iii) Illustrate how this fits into the ISSE diagram (Fig 1)
(iv) Identify key variables and data needed to measure these variables
(v) Suggest ideas for sampling plan to gather needed data
(vi) List anticipated findings
3:45 Break
4:00 Reports from breakout groups
4:30 Wrap up (including assignment of writing tasks for white paper)
5:00 Adjourn
Planning Meeting #3 for BES 3
“Land Change Scenario and Locational Choice Modeling”
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM April 16, 2009
Technology Research Center, UMBC Campus
Leaders: M.L. Cadenasso and E. G. Irwin
Goals
• Lay the groundwork for identifying key research questions that can motivate and guide our development of new spatial models of urban social-ecological systems (SES’s) for BES 3. The modeling approach would seek to explain spatially heterogeneous land use/cover dynamics as an integrated system that evolves as a result of human decisionmaking, ecological functioning and biophysical processes over multiple spatial and temporal scales. The approach would account for interactions among these processes that occur within and across different scales, as well as other feedback effects and constraints that influence land use/cover outcomes. It would also seek to quantify and understand the emergence of system-level properties such as sustainability and resilience.
• Facilitate discussion of key management goals for urban SES’s, e.g., sustainability, resilience, adaptive capacity. What do these things mean in the context of the BES program? How have these concepts been formalized in the literature? Are there predictive theories or testable hypotheses? How could BES 3 make progress on formalizing, developing and empirically modeling/testing these theories? Local governments within the BES study region (including the City of Baltimore and Baltimore County) and the State of Maryland are engaged in sustainability efforts. How can BES models complement and inform these efforts?
• Link our discussion of questions and models to discussion from previous meeting on climate change and environmental justice and suggest potential hooks to future meetings.
• Identify how we can build on existing data and research, modifications that are needed to existing data collection efforts, new data collection efforts that are needed
• Link our discussion to ISSE framework (see Figure 1). This is represented by the following conceptual diagram and the “six question” format that links human and ecological systems:
1. How do long-term press disturbances and short-term pulse disturbances interact to alter ecosystem structure and function?
2. How can biotic structure be both a cause and a consequence of ecological fluxes of energy and matter?
3. How do altered ecosystem dynamics affect ecosystem services?
4. How do changes in vital ecosystem services alter human outcomes?
5. How do perceptions and outcomes affect human behavior?
6. Which human actions influence the frequency, magnitude, or form of press and pulse disturbance regimes across ecosystems, and what determines these human actions?
Tentative agenda
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Introduction and overview (Mary and Elena)
9:10 Overview of renewal process (Steward)
9:20 Guided discussion #1: Urban spatial models of land use change and location choice (Elena)
10:10 Guided discussion #2: Ecological models of spatial heterogeneity and patch dynamics (Mary)
11:00 Break
11:15 Guided discussion #3: Management goals for urban SES’s
12:15 Individual response exercise: ask each participant to write down what they think the key research questions are; turn in responses before going to lunch
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Synthesis of key research questions with full group and formation of breakout groups
2:00 Breakout groups (by research question) respond to a series of tasks (guided by white paper format):
(i) Provide clear statement of research question and motivation for this question
(ii) Articulate key processes, scales, feedbacks and constraints that need to be studied in order to address research question
(iii) Illustrate how this fits into the ISSE diagram (Fig 1)
(iv) Identify key variables and data needed to measure these variables
(v) Suggest ideas for sampling plan to gather needed data
(vi) List anticipated findings
3:45 Break
4:00 Reports from breakout groups
4:30 Wrap up (including assignment of writing tasks for white paper)
5:00 Adjourn
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
BES Renewal To Use New Version of ISSE
As stated in the previous post, the Baltimore Ecosystem Study has chosen to use the human-biophysical system feedback loop produced by the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. This conceptual tool is sometimes called the Integrated Science for Society and Environment loop. The LTER Network has produced two versions of the loop, and during our 23 January 2009 planning meeting it was decided to use the version that is found in the LTER Decadal Plan (http://www.lternet.edu/decadalplan/). You can click on the figure above to see a larger version.
There are two advantages of this version of the human-biophysical feedback loop: 1) It identifies six research questions, expanding on the human perceptions and actions component. 2) It includes the possibility that external events – whether biophysical or socio-economic – can affect the social component, the biophysical component, and the events linking the two.
The six questions, keyed to the figure above, are as follows:
1. How do long-term press disturbances and short-term pulse disturbances interact to alter ecosystem structure and function?
2. How can biotic structure be both a cause and a consequence of ecological fluxes of energy and matter?
3. How do altered ecosystem dynamics affect ecosystem services?
4. How do changes in vital ecosystem services alter human outcomes?
5. How do perceptions and outcomes affect human behavior?
6. Which human actions influence the frequency, magnitude, or form of press and pulse disturbance regimes across ecosystems, and what determines these human actions?
Because this feedback loop is an important tool for ensuring that we incorporate more effective linkages between social and biophysical patterns and processes in our renewal, the more complete set of questions will be helpful to us.
Monday, December 15, 2008
BES Renewal Process
Planning for Renewal – BES-3
Planning for the renewal of BES will involve working meetings and white papers. A series of six meetings will be held before submission of the BES LTER renewal proposal in February 2010. Each meeting is envisioned to be a day long event. The Mid-Term Review of BES conducted in 2007 provides necessary background. The review team’s report and the NSF Program Officer’s letter are at http://www.beslter.org/internal/frame8-stuff.html (see heading “Renewal Material” and its subheading “2006 Mid-Term Site Review”).
Product – Each meeting will produce a white paper as a contribution toward the renewal proposal. The required content of the white paper is given after the descriptions of the meetings and schedule, below.
Participation – All Co-Principal Investigators, Post Docs, Graduate Students, and agency and partner Collaborators are invited and encouraged to attend the meetings.
Goals and Strategies – All meetings should:
1. Be primarily product oriented;
2. Result in a referenced white paper as input for the renewal proposal;
3. Employ a few synthetic presentations as stimulus for discussion;
4. Be designed to emphasize discussion rather than presentation;
5. Employ the LTER Network’s Integrated Science for Society and Environment feedback model template (Figure 1);
6. Seek to integrate social, and biophysical realms of research;
7. Identify and state the integrated theory motivating activities to be proposed for the renewal;
8. Articulate integrated modeling and quantitative approaches; and
9. Highlight opportunities for teaching and for educational research that emerge from the theme of each meeting.
Meeting Topics and Schedule
Individual Meetings with Agency Stakeholders. Three representatives of BES met with Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Maryland State sustainability officers and other decision leaders in October 2008. We explored how to establish a regular communication to exchange information of mutual interest about research, projects, and policy. The insights from these meetings will be used to design an ongoing process for BES to identify shared concerns and opportunities for interaction with policy, management, and decision leaders in the Baltimore region. Leaders: Morgan Grove, Steward Pickett, and Mary Washington.
Meeting 1 -- October 14, 2008:
Scoping the Renewal Process.
The BES Steering Committee, consisting of all Co-PIs and BES Collaborators met to share thoughts on the five conceptual areas to organize the renewal proposed at the 2007 meeting. The feedback loop (Figure 1) that will be an important conceptual tool for planning and organizing BES-3 was also presented. The structure and goals of the white papers, and the consideration of teaching and education research opportunities in each planning meeting were reviewed. Attendees were asked to study the Mid-Term Review report and the notes from the 2007 Steering Committee meeting concerning components of new theory for BES-3, as well as the LTER Network’s model template for Integrated Science for Society and Environment (ISSE) to prepare for the Steering Committee discussion.
Meeting 2 -- January 23, 2009:
Environmental Change and Environmental Inequity.
The issues of global change is significant for Baltimore, as is the differential impact of current and future environments on different social groups. BES-3 must address climate change directly, and identify the ecosystem services that might be altered by changing climate. Measurement of those ecosystem services, and how they can alter environmental hazard and vulnerability, and consequently, environmental justice should be proposed. Explicit measures of each of these features of the urban ecosystem should be identified and justified. Leaders: Larry Band and Kirstin Dow
Meeting 3 -- April 16, 2009:
Land Change Scenarios and Locational Choice Modeling.
The changing structure of urban areas is a key topic for BES-3. A task before us is to develop scenarios for land cover and land use change. The relationship of land change scenarios to models of locational choices that households and firms might make, and the social and economic drivers of those choices will be identified and specific approaches identified and justified. How policy interacts with scenarios can also be explored. Leaders: Mary Cadenasso and Elena Irwin
Meeting 4 – June 23, 2009:
New Hydro-Ecological-Social Theory.
It is crucial to articulate a new generation of integrated theory covering the various major disciplines that constitute BES. Several areas should be considered as a framework for a new statement of the theory unifying BES-3: 1) An urban stream continuum theory; 2) Controls on ecosystem flux and retention; 4) New social theoretical framework; and 4) Theoretical and conceptual approachs addressing coupling and feedbacks between social and biophysical components of the metropolitan system. The mainly biophysical theory should, in cooperation with social scientists, articulate both the expected social-economic drivers and social-economic effects of urban stream continuum and flux theory, while the mainly social theory should, in cooperation with biophysical scientists, articulate the hypothesized biophysical drivers and effects. Here is where education theory that justifies education research or pedagogical methodologies should be articulated and related to the physical-ecological-social theory that emerges. Leaders: Sujay Kaushal and Austin Troy
Meeting 5 -- October 20, 2009:
Integrated Sampling Strategy
Integration across the multiple disciplines within BES can be enhanced by a clearly articulated sampling strategy that spatially and temporally relates the various social and biophysical samples. Options to be explored are the reconciliation of our current different sampling strategies, complementing the existing strategy by new spatial arrays, or articulating a sampling design essentially de novo. This meeting should produce a fully annotated map for one to several sampling strategies that take advantage of our existing data base while advancing sample integration in BES-3. How the sampling strategy can support teaching and education research should be explored. Leaders: Peter Groffman and Morgan Grove
Meeting 6 -- November 17-18, 2009:
Writing Team Working Meeting
A small group will take on the task of preparing the renewal proposal based on the insights from the planning meetings. The leaders of the previous five meetings and other key BES members will convene at the Cary Institute in Millbrook, New York, in order to draft an integrated proposal for BES-3. This meeting will be a focused, intensive writing session lasting two days. Leader: Steward Pickett
BES-3 Renewal Proposal White Papers
Each of the five preparatory meetings listed above will produce a white paper. The meeting conveners will be responsible for organizing the drafting of the paper, and will involve other contributors as needed and available. The papers should satisfy the following goals: 1) State a clear theoretical motivation for work to be conducted in the third phase of BES; 2) Identify clear relationships between social and biophysical topics; and 3) Suggest the key feedbacks between social and biophysical realms to be investigated.
The components of each white paper should be as follows:
1. Title. A conceptual orientation should be emphasized. Titles for these components of BES-3 should be phrased to engage potential reviewers.
2. Research Questions. What research questions have been addressed to date in BES? Briefly, what has been learned? What new questions or outgrowths of the previous questions should be addressed in the renewal? Where do these new or extended questions fit in the LTER social-biophysical feedback loop (Figure 1)?
3. Motivations for the Questions. What explicit theoretical, methodological, and practical motivations are there for each research question suggested? What well known and cutting edge literature supports the theory, methodology, or practical concern?
4. Key Variables. What are the key variables to be measured to answer the questions? How will scenario generation and future projections be supported by the variables suggested? How can the variables from social and biophysical realms be related?
5. Sampling Plan. What sampling plan supports the suggested research questions? How does this exploit the existing BES sampling array? What future changes to the sampling regime are required? How does this sampling plan support the integration of biophysical disciplines, different social disciplines, and the relationship of biophysical and social research? Draft maps of the suggested sampling regime must be included.
6. Anticipated Findings. What outcomes are expected? What theoretical advances are likely? What methodological advances can be served? What practical contributions can be supported? How does the plan contribute to quantifying the feedbacks in the LTER social-biophysical loop (Figure 1)?
7. Illustrative Material for the draft proposal, such as figures, conceptual diagrams, tables, and brief text boxes can be used to summarize and support key points of the argument of the white paper.
8. Executive Summary. A brief (ca. 200 words) abstract or bulleted summary should be prepared to assist the writing team.
The white paper for each meeting will be due one month after the meeting.
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