ISEED — Idaho Social-Ecological Exploratory Dynamics
ISEED awards provide seed funding to support highly innovative and collaborative SES science related to MILES. The program also encourages and fosters graduate and undergraduate involvement in SES research. Faculty at University of Idaho, Idaho State University, and Boise State University are eligible to apply.
Population in Idaho is predicted to grow rapidly in the next two decades. The majority of that growth is projected to occur around Idaho's small and mid-sized cities. However, the different land use policies that will influence where and how Idaho's cities will grow is not well understood. The urban growth will impact the services that the landscape can provide, including water quality and quantity, agriculture production, air quality, biodiversity, and recreational opportunities. However, the extent to which urbanization will impact ecosystem services in these cities is unknown, nor is known the trade-offs among different ecosystem services and their implications for human wellbeing. The overarching objective of our project is to help guide future land use policy in Idaho’s cities by quantifying ecosystem services impacts and trade-offs resulting from different policy scenarios. We have three specific objectives. First (Land Use Scenarios), we will determine what drives patterns of past urban growth, project urban land use in the future, and identify plausible scenarios of land use change based on existing and potential land use policy at each site. Second (Ecosystem Services Valuation), we will quantify the biophysical capacity of landscapes to provide services (supply) as well as explore their sociocultural and economic value (demand). Third (Synthesis), we will measure how different future land use scenarios impact ecosystem services supply and demand. A major outcome of our project is to produce results that policymakers and stakeholders can use to make decisions about future land use in the three MILES sites. This project will a) build on and link together on-going research by established MILES faculty, b) support two new faculty, and c) train two graduate students and a post-doctoral fellow in Human-Environment Systems research.
The Spatially Explicit Resilience-Vulnerability (SERV) model is used to examine how physical exposure affects social vulnerability. The research team will attempt to extend the SERV model to determine the impact of society on the physical environment. Social components and physical factors like climate change will serve as the exposure component of the SERV model to measure the impact of social factors on SES vulnerability. The SERV model will also be extended to include risk perception and indicators gained from stakeholder engagement to examine how those factors influence SES vulnerability. The SERV model will determine the vulnerability of SES using place, spatial and scale-specific biophysical indicators for Fernan Lake, ID. The SERV model calculates SES vulnerability scores using all three components of traditional vulnerability assessments (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity).
We propose to have a graduate student generate limnological data (required as part of the UI pilot program at Fernan Lake) and then explore and understand how these data are processed by scientists that develop dynamic visual and virtual models to identify potentials for standardized data formats.
Under the direction of Jairo Hernandez (Civil Engineering), a graduate student will initiate the development of a groundwater model for the Treasure Valley. This activity is essential to our goal of better understanding future water use in Treasure Valley. This model will be constructed so that it is integrated into the Envision modeling framework.
Under the direction of Julie Heath (Biological Sciences), a post-doctoral fellow will develop an agent-based model of the relationship between human disturbance and wildlife behavior. The case study for this model will be the impact of noise on eagle nesting behavior in the foothills of the Owyhee Mountains. This project will demonstrate our capacity to explicitly link human activities to ecological change. It will also help us build the capacity to examine and model the indirect impacts of urban growth on the ecosystem. Importantly, these requested funds will be leveraged by additional university and EPSCoR funds to provide a full year of post-doctoral support.
This study conducts a global analysis of N export and addresses the impact of spatial scale, land use and climate impacts on stream nitrogen export for 78 catchments representing a range of climates, sizes and land covers across the globe. Specifically, we address the following questions:
Funding from the EPSCoR SEED grant will support a postdoctoral associate at half-time (19 hr/wk (remotely based in Tucson) for 18 weeks to complete and submit one manuscript on these analyses and also complete analyses/figures and draft manuscript on a 15N experiment in ephemeral urban waterways showing that N trace gas emissions from these waterways can represent as much as 25-96% of total losses from semi-arid urban catchments. These novel findings will contribute to our understanding of climate and land use controls on N losses and associated water quality and will represent rapid products for the MILES program.
Our objective is to prepare and administer a survey to stakeholders, including policy decision makers, within the Pocatello, Idaho region. The survey will focus on ecosystem services related to the Portneuf River. The survey is two-fold, including both traditional style survey questions that will address demographic data, attitudes and beliefs, and citizenship perspectives and visitor experience photography (stakeholders will be asked to photograph features, places, or activities that are most notable to them). This work will allow us preliminary data for future EPSCoR MILES work by identifying stakeholder groups, providing baseline data on stakeholder group demographics, attitudes and beliefs concerning ecosystem services, and citizenship perspectives. In addition it will provide insight into what people (literally) view as notable via photographs. These photographs, along with the historic photographs provided to stakeholder groups will then also be linked to a series of thematic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps that we will create to display the spatial element of the survey data. Finally, we also plan to utilize help from MURI students in this process. Overall, this work will provide information on stakeholders and baseline data, it will begin the process of understanding and analyzing the historical and current patterns of and attitudes toward landscape change, and begin to identify social drivers of that change and thus vulnerabilities in the ecosystem services.
This proposal will gather a significant and essential collection of historical data on management of the Portneuf River to assist in various aspects of investigations on social-ecological systems in the Pocatello study area since World War II. The data will take the form of correspondence, technical reports, technical drawings, maps, and photographs. It will provide the basis for much of the MILES team research into historic patterns of water management and ecosystem services. Federal agencies responsible for management decisions and oversight of the Portneuf watershed deposited much of their records in the National Archives and Records Administration regional facility in Seattle, Washington, which is the location for this research trip. Requested expenses cover the costs for MILES participants Kevin Marsh, professor of history, and Joshua Eppley, graduate research assistant for the ISU MILES social sciences team. In addition, Marsh and Eppley will gather relevant data on water management and ecosystem services in other watersheds of current or future MILES studies, specifically the Upper Snake, Boise, and Coeur d’Alene rivers. This will assist interdisciplinary, statewide research endeavors helping to achieve MILES objectives.
Birds and bats are important “top-down” predators that provide helpful ecosystem services such as pollination and predation on plant-damaging herbivorous-insects. Increasing human activities such as noise pollution are altering bird and bat presence and activity, which could lead to alterations in ecosystem services, with effects evident across many trophic levels (predators-insects plants- soil). Few studies, if any, have investigated the impacts of noise pollution across multiple trophic levels, or how, mechanistically these changes occur. We propose to quantify the cascading effects of noise pollution using an experimental approach wherein we exclude predatory birds and bats from shrubs using bird-netting, and then study how the experimentally-induced reduction in predation impacts herbivorous-insect presence and activity, and the resulting consequences to plant physiology, and ultimately leaf litter-fall chemistry. We will set up netting-treatments in urban and wilderness sites to see if treatment (noise pollution) effects are greater in less-human-impacted areas (i.e., does noise pollution disturbance have greater impacts on bird and bat populations that have not already been affected by human noise?). This research is important for understanding how urban growth impacts beneficial ecosystem services, especially for mid-sized cities such as Pocatello that have opportunities to balance their growth while minimizing disruptions of ecosystem services.
Subsurface water flow paths in the Lower Portneuf Valley are critical to aquifer and stream recharge, yet are generally understood only in broad terms. We propose to apply aqueous geochemical and geochronological techniques to elucidate subsurface water flow paths and their interactions with the physical and biological landscape. Three likely subsurface water flow paths transmit water from upland recharge areas to streams and tributary aquifers, and ultimately to the main Lower Portneuf Valley Aquifer: a shallow soil water flow path, a mid-level flow path in surface deposits and Tertiary basin fill, and a deeper flow path in pre-Tertiary bedrock. These three flow paths have contrasting spatial and temporal scales of isolation from the Earth surface environment, and thus bear distinct contrasts in their responses to recharge variability and surface-sourced contamination. We propose to use laboratory analyses of bomb-test tritium and naturally occurring radiocarbon in waters sampled from the three subsurface environments to determine water age and to use laboratory analyses of major elements in solution to determine water-rock interactions and natural water quality.
The objective of this research project is to complete an initial phase of social science Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data collection and mapping to illustrate and spatially analyze ecosystem services associated with a stakeholder survey and visitor experience photography (VEP). This work will involve collecting and organizing demographic, social, cultural, and economic data from online and digital databases for Idaho and the western United States and data associated with a stakeholder survey. This project will be completed in relation with the NSF EPSCoR MILES I-SEED program proposal titled “Ecosystem Services Stakeholder Survey and Visitor Experience Photography” and “Archival Research of Historic Records of Portneuf River Management.” This work will allow us to create preliminary databases and GIS maps for future EPSCoR MILES stakeholder and social survey projects. Overall, this work will begin the process of social science data collection for ecosystem services, begin to identify social and spatial patterns and historical channel change in and around the Portneuf River, create a GIS workstation for MURI and social science GIS projects, and supply Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS) cases for our field work with GPS units along the Portneuf River
This project will attempt to assess the societal and ecological implications of the changing boundaries for urbanized areas in the Boise River and Portneuf River basins. Documentary and survey research will aid in gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the historic and current trends associated with the urban-rural landscape changes. By engaging both the public as well as landowners and other stakeholders, this work hopes to add to community understanding of the river basins and associated ecosystem services, as well as community history and values. Additionally, a better understanding of the landscape changes and the publics’ values and beliefs surrounding these changes may well have profound impacts on how public policy will have to be developed and implemented in different jurisdictions. Finally, work with visualization and modeling tools will give stakeholders and the public an image of possible future scenarios, allowing them to evaluate how they want change to progress.
Assessments and syntheses research are critical aspects of scholarship in the theme of social-ecological systems. Bibliometric analysis - and the resulting systematic reviews of the literature - can illuminate general trends, key topics and important advancements in a research domain. This project will apply quantitative bibliometric analysis methods, in conjunction with GIS spatial analysis, to the published research on ecosystem services (ES) in 3 urban landscapes. We will identify the role that “frameworks” play in steering and advancing research and address the links among different frameworks, disciplinary backgrounds, scholarly networks, and the targeted ecosystems in urban landscapes. Our goal is to advance our understanding of different frameworks and approaches used in the studies exploring ecosystem services in mid-sized cities under rapid urban growth – this new knowledge will be critical for the success of the MILES project. We will assess the literature in a systematic, quantitative, and data-driven manner. The results will supply some quantitative evidence in response to the Recommendation 1 and Recommendation 2 in the NSF reverse site visit report as well as to highlight the need for a new framework and mixed approaches for studies of ecosystem services in Idaho’s mid-sized cities.
Boundaries are an important research theme of the ecological and social sciences and can unite diverse disciplines to advance understanding of social-ecological systems (SES). Realized and perceived boundaries exist in many forms: geographical, biophysical, political, and social. However, the nature of such boundaries and the extent to which they overlay one another to create “SES domains,” is understudied. In many cases, social and ecological boundaries may not map simply on one another, highlighting mismatches of socio-ecological domains. We propose to conduct a common suite of analyses and cross-site comparisons of the structure, function, and overlap of social and ecological boundaries in Idaho’s mid-size cities (Pocatello/Idaho Falls, Coeur d’Alene, and Treasure Valley/Boise regions). We will use multiple, pre-existing datasets and geospatial analyses to locate SES boundaries and associated domains. Within sites, we will characterize the structure of these boundaries (e.g., sharp boundary edges or gradients), address domain function regarding “hotspots” for ecosystem services, and compare and contrast boundaries across the sites. Finally, we will examine how these boundaries have historically shifted in space and time and model future scenarios (e.g., under climate change, urban development, and their interactions) to project how SES boundaries might appear and function in the future. We expect that identifying and studying SES boundaries and domains will allow us to quantify hotspots of activity and zones of social ecological conflict or cooperation that can inform future research, land management, policy, and sustainable development.