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FLUXES...
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"What are the fluxes of energy and matter in urban ecosystems, and how do they change over the long term?"
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Although many natural ecosystems have been profitably studied from this perspective, the data on urban ecosystems in the United States are almost completely absent. Certainly, the increased energy subsidy humans practice in and around cities drives the changes in ecosystem function in the largest sense. However, there is a need to quantify the inputs and outputs of key energetic and material fluxes.
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RELATIONSHIPS...
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"How does the spatial structure of ecological, physical, and socio-economic factors in the metropolis affect ecosystem function?"
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Data and models generated to answer this question can provide new mechanisms for the coarser-scale patterns of fluxes discovered by taking the ecosystem approach in the first question. An important issue is to understand whether the major effect of humans is through their effects on patch structure in urban ecosystems, or through their behaviors as individuals or groups. Of course, the spatial structure of human, natural, and physical patches in urban areas changes through time due to social, economic, behavioral, successional, erosional, and many other forces. Therefore, the temporal dimension is again required to understand the linkages, feedbacks, controls, and cycles in patchiness in urban regions.
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LINKAGES...
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"How can urban residents develop and use an understanding of the metropolis as an ecological system to improve the quality of their environment and their daily lives?"
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There can and should be a dynamic interplay between the intellectual pursuit of ecological understanding and the development of ecological literacy and ecologically sound practices in the metropolitan area. The general public, students and teachers, and various policy-makers and environmental managers all have a stake in the outcome of such an endeavor. While all ecology educators would assert that understanding the environment has utility, here is the opportunity to test this relationship in a bold and long-term fashion. Can Baltimore become a model center for environmental quality and ecological literacy at least in part as a result of the proposed project?
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