The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded grants for two long-term studies of urban ecology, representing the first attempts ever made to study the long-term ecology of urban environments.
The awards will involve research on urban environments in the cities of Phoenix, Arizona, and Baltimore, Maryland. Phoenix and Baltimore will soon become the most thoroughly and scientifically studied urban environments in the world, according to Scott Collins, director of NSF's LTER program
"Factors that control urban ecosystems are not only environmental, but also social and economic. These factors and their interactions need to be considered to understand urban ecosystems over long time frames and broad spatial scales," Collins says.
The new NSF grants have been made to Arizona State University, for the Central Arizona-Phoenix urban LTER site, and to the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study urban LTER site. Scientists at several other institutions also share in these awards.
Phoenix and Baltimore were chosen in part because, according to Collins, they represent two ends of the spectrum, in terms of their histories. "Phoenix is changing very quickly, with desert turning into farmland, industrial and residential sites almost weekly. In Phoenix, "before" and "after" experiments are possible.
Baltimore, on the other hand, has a history that extends back to the 1700s. This long history will allow ecologists to look at human settlements as ecosystems, across three centuries" Collins says. "The results should give us a good idea of how humans and the lands they inhabit are interacting."