Poster Abstract Details

Author(s):
Lucy Hutyra, Nathan Phillips, et al.

Affiliation:
Boston University, Dept of Geography & Environment

Presentation Type:
Poster

Topic Area:
Monitoring and predicting human influences on landscapes and ecosystems

Abstract Text:
The urbanization and growth of the human population over past decades has yielded cities of unprecedented size and form, which emit significant quantities of waste, transform habitat, modify major biogeochemical cycles, alter local climate, and diminish human health. Carbon exchange is a key indicator of the intensity and pattern of urban metabolism, but the state of science currently does not address the close coupling of carbon exchange within and across human and natural subsystems of urban and urbanizing systems. Almost all research has focused on urban carbon emissions, or separately on urban vegetation carbon exchange. Thus, we are currently unable to answer basic questions such as whether vegetation exchanges carbon more locally than it does with a metropolitan region. This poster will present the initial results from the Boston ULTRA-Ex research project to develop integrated measurements and an analysis framework for coupled carbon exchange in an urban-to-rural gradient from Boston to the rural Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research Site. This project combines ground-based measurements of carbon exchange and energy flows with socioeconomic, meteorological and satellite measurements and modeling of human activity and the built and natural environments. These data will be integrated within a dynamic, Geospatial Information System that will reproduce the existing patterns of carbon exchange from diel to seasonal time scales at sub-meter spatial resolution across the urban-to-rural gradient. This analytical framework will then be used to forecast carbon exchange impacts of future land use change and urban growth scenarios, advancing fundamental knowledge about coupling of carbon exchange in urbanizing systems, and providing policy makers with specific and relevant information to align urban growth planning with sustainability goals.