Conference: 2019 Louisville Earth Stewardship Initiative' August 11-16, 2019, Louisville, Kentucky

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

Environmental issues such as urban heat waves, flooding and sewer overflow, and access to green space present challenges to cities nationwide and threaten environmental sustainability. The Earth Stewardship Initiative (ESI), as a part of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) conference, immerses scientists in a demonstration project that helps shape cities by integrating ecological study with landscape and urban design. The participants include scientists from many disciplines and career stages, city officials, and urban planners. The emphasis on maximizing diversity of the participants will make ESI more effective and will improve societal impacts. ESI staffers will work with city employees to identify plans, projects, and priorities that could benefit from increased engagement with designers and scientists with different perspectives. At the end of the ESI project, the target city receives several white papers detailing solutions to identified sustainability issues. Graduate students exchange ideas and information with city workers while gaining invaluable experience from their collaboration with diverse frontline professionals. Ecologists are able to apply their academic knowledge towards practical problems, and city officials and employees gain access to current research and best practices. Entering its fourth program year, the ESI project has significantly impacted training of urban ecologists and is fostering the application of creative urban ecology through an interdisciplinary design summit that addresses local ecological challenges for the ESA host city. Historically, ecological research was predominately executed in remote areas where ecosystems were relatively isolated from human activity. The emergence of the field of urban ecology recognized the incongruence between ecological results generated in remote, protected areas and those drawn from experimentation in ecosystems heavily impacted by human use. Recognizing the critical feedbacks between human activities and patterns of land-use, biogeochemical cycles, climate, hydrology, and biodiversity, ecologists need to shift from studying ecology in and of the city to a more active approach to study and shape urban ecosystems. The ESI provides a forum for ecologists to position themselves as contributors to shaping cities and pushes them to do so. During the summit, participants are divided into teams and will research local sustainability issues identified by city officials using ecological perspectives to brainstorm creative solutions for complex city issues. They will also propose "designed experiments," which embed scientific research and statistical analysis into existing projects. This both advances theoretical knowledge and informs local project management, providing a more direct path between NSF research and societal benefits. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.